Original Townsite of Mannford

The vote to move came four years before the town did. When plans for the Keystone Reservoir developed in 1958, the water was to cover Mannford, and in June 1959 eighty-three of its ninety-three registered voters voted to move the town to the southeast. The new site, surrounded by water on three sides, was promoted as the first comprehensively planned relocated town in Oklahoma's history, with a new school, municipal buildings and paved streets. Mannford had 426 people in 1955 and 892 by 1970, and it calls itself the Striped Bass Capital.

What the plaque says

Original Townsite of Mannford Began 1/4 mi. east on the Creek headrights of Tom & Hazel Mann. Town was named for Mann's Ford across Cimarron R. in 1895 G.M. Evans leased this 90 acres and surrounding land. AV&W RR (Frisco) came in 1902 and P.O. est. Apr. 11, 1903. Hall C. Miller bought the 90 acres for townsite Feb. 21, 1906. Relocated 1962-63 due to Keystone Dam. Oklahoma Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Woody Guthrie Center — 23 mi
  The archive and museum of the Okemah-born songwriter, in a 1922 paper warehouse in the Tulsa Arts District, holding more than 10,000 items including his notebooks.
• Creek Nation Council Oak Park — 23 mi
  The oak on a south Tulsa hill where the Lochapoka Muscogee lit their fire in 1836 after removal from Alabama, the ceremonial ground from which Tulsa took its name.
• Greenwood Rising — 23 mi
  The history center at Greenwood and Archer that tells how Tulsa's Black Wall Street was built, how white mobs burned it in 1921, and how its people rebuilt it.
• Philbrook Museum of Art — 24 mi
  Waite Phillips's 1927 Italian villa and its Villa Lante-inspired gardens, given to Tulsa in 1938 and open as an art museum since October 1939, strong in Native American art.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Round Mountain — 6.4 mi
• Cleveland, Oklahoma's Pioneer Oil City — 12 mi
• World Famous Athlete Jim Thorpe — 16 mi
• Washington Irving — 16 mi