Lugert

On Saturday, April 27, 1912, three separate storms with heavy hail and lightning swept the west half of Kiowa County, then Lugert's county. A Hobart dispatch printed in the Daily Ardmoreite two days later reported Lugert a complete loss except for one store building, with three people killed there and fifteen injured, and said town officials had sent out a call for aid for twenty-eight destitute families. Elsewhere in the county an Orient freight train was blown from the track at full speed, and five cars of coal were carried sixty feet.

What the plaque says

Bird's eye view of Lugert, OK 1908 Lugert, Oklahoma Austrian immigrant, Frank Lugert (1868-1958), founded the town of Lugert when the Kiowa-Comanche- Apache Reservation opened for settlement in 1901. Mr. Lugert ran the post office, train depot, and a general store. The town, with a peak population of over 400, thrived until 1912 when a tornado destroyed a significant number of homes and businesses. The town continued to exist until 1947 when the W.C. Austin Dam was completed for the Lugert- Altus Irrigation District and water soon covered the townsite. The town of Lugert was located 1 1/4 miles southeast of this point.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Quartz Mountain State Park — 1.0 mi
  The granite Quartz Mountains, the low western range of the Wichitas, rising from Lake Altus-Lugert, with a CCC-built park of 1937, a rebuilt lodge and the climbing rock of Baldy Point.
• Museum of the Western Prairie — 17 mi
  The Oklahoma Historical Society's museum in Altus, telling southwest Oklahoma from the granite uplift through the Western Trail, Texas's Greer County, dugouts, irrigation and the air base.

More markers nearby

• Peace on the Plains — 3.2 mi
• First Shelterbelt in the United States — 15 mi
• Altus-Jackson County Well — 18 mi
• Camp Radziminski — 23 mi