Lovell

The student pastors who served Lovell came from a school barely older than the church. Ely Vaughn Zollars founded it at Enid on October 9, 1906, as Oklahoma Christian University, and classes began in September 1907; it became Phillips University after Thomas Wharton Phillips, one of its backers, died in 1912. Its graduate seminary went independent in 1987 and carries on as Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. The university filed for bankruptcy on April 1, 1998 and closed four months later, and in 1999 Northern Oklahoma College bought the Enid campus for $6.1 million.

What the plaque says

Lovell, Oklahoma 1889 Lovell Christian Church 1911-1971 The Lovell Christian Church was built by area families on this site donated by the J.W. Lovell family. The first trustees were C.J. Gragg, G.I. Pollard and W.B. Young. The church was chartered in May 1911 and dedicated July 11, 1911 with 200 in attendance. Pastors were pri- marily ministerial students from Phillips University Seminary (Enid, OK). The church was closed in 1971. 50, 60 and 90 year anniversaries of the church were celebrated in 1961, 1971, and 2001. The town of Lovell was originally named Perth (U.S. Post Office established in May 1889). A nearby hamlet, Standard, merged with Perth in 1902 after a Santa Fe rail- road was built nearby. The post office name was changed from Perth to Lovell in February 1906 after James W. Lovell platted sites on his land for town expansion. Oklahoma Historical Society 239-2001

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library — 17 mi
  The 1902 Carnegie Library in Guthrie where Oklahoma's statehood was proclaimed in 1907, saved from demolition in 1972 by adding a museum of the seventeen territorial years beside it.
• The Chisholm — 22 mi
  Kingfisher's farming and ranching museum on the Chisholm Trail's stage branch, with a heritage village and Horizon Hill, the mansion a territorial governor built for a capital that never came.
• Cherokee Strip Museum and Rose Hill School — 24 mi
  Perry's museum of the Cherokee Outlet, in a town that was a land office on bare prairie the morning of September 16, 1893 and held some 25,000 people that night.
• Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center — 27 mi
  The Oklahoma Historical Society's Enid museum of the September 1893 run into the Cherokee Outlet, with the town's original land office among the old buildings out back.

More markers nearby

• Sheridan — 5.8 mi
• First Town Site of Marshall — 7.1 mi
• Mulhall — 13 mi
• Baker's Ranch — 15 mi