Love County Courthouse

The county takes its name from Overton Love, a Chickasaw farmer, businessman and politician who came west from Mississippi in 1843 at about twenty. His settlement, Love's Valley, lay some six miles east of present Marietta, and he became one of the largest Chickasaw landholders and cattle raisers in the area, working 8,000 acres of Red River bottomland. He sat in both houses of the Chickasaw National Council and served as a county and district judge. Love County was created at statehood in 1907, with Marietta, founded in 1887, as its seat.

What the plaque says

Love County Courthouse Oklahoma's first county courthouse built after Statehood. The corner- stone of Nelson Georgia marble was laid during Masonic ceremonies on April 29, 1910. The building was dedicated on November 24, with Senator J. Clint Graham presiding. The building houses all county offices and is a point of pride and focus of community activities.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Murray State Park — 8.0 mi
  Oklahoma's first and largest state park, built by New Deal crews on former Chickasaw Nation land south of Ardmore, with Tucker Tower, a governors' retreat never finished, on a point above the lake.
• Chickasaw National Capitol — 33 mi
  The red granite capitol the Chickasaw Nation finished at Tishomingo in 1898, forced out of at statehood, used as the county courthouse for most of a century and reclaimed by the Nation in 1992.

More markers nearby

• Edmund Pickens (Ok-chan-tubby) — 8.3 mi
• Camp Leavenworth — 23 mi
• Tishomingo — 32 mi