Stella Friends Academy

Quakers of the Society of Friends founded this academy in March 1894, about six months after the Cherokee Outlet opened to settlement in September 1893, when this ground became part of Woods County. It served the Friends' settlement until 1922 and in time taught high school and one year of college. Alfalfa County was carved from Woods County at statehood in 1907. Its rural schools kept merging long after the academy closed: ten districts in the 1960s became three independent ones by the 1990s, Timberlake, Cherokee and Burlington.

What the plaque says

Stella Friends Academy Buildings near here from 1897. Under auspices of Friends Church, the Academy was noted for high moral, spiritual and scholastic standards. Closed 1922. Named for teacher of first school (1893) in this vicinity, a sod house near Stella Church in Cherokee Strip. Oklahoma Historical Society and State Highway Commission. 1959

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge — 6.7 mi
  About twelve thousand acres of salt flat near Jet where visitors dig hourglass selenite crystals in season, and where the Cherokee Outlet treaty kept the salt open to every tribe.
• Sod House Museum — 23 mi
  Marshal McCully's two-room soddy of 1894 near Aline, the one sod house left in Oklahoma that a homesteader built, under a protective cover where it has always stood.

More markers nearby

• Carry Nation — 17 mi
• Sod House — 23 mi