Shawnee, Oklahoma

Union Shawnee Early Childhood Center-1831 N.

In 1871 a Quaker mission was established here.

(The current Mission Hill Hospital is located near that site, now occupied by an historic building.) That first missionary, Joseph Newsom, opened a school in 1872.

Gregory's University, a Benedictine Catholic institution founded in 1875, was located in Shawnee; however, St.

By 1876 a post office and trading post had been established a quarter mile west of the mission at what became known as Shawnee Town.

Beginning in April 1889, the United States government succumbed to the pressure that had built to open the tribal lands to white settlement.

In the Land Run of 1891 onto surplus land of the Sac and Fox, Citizen Pottawatomie and Shawnee, just east of the original run, was opened for settlement.

A second run, onto the Kickapoo Land to the west of the original, was held in 1895, adding more acreage added to Pottawatomie County.

In 1896, the Tecumseh Railway was built from Shawnee to Tecumseh, being then the county seat; and, under later CO&G ownership, the line was extended to Asher in 1902.

Between March 1901 and March 1902, 375 railroad cars of cotton product were shipped out of Shawnee, along with 150,000 bales of cotton.

By 1902, there were seven cotton gins in the immediate area and two cotton compresses.

In 1903-1904 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway extended service to town, after being given land inducements from Henry Beard a...

Shawnee got electric streetcars when the Shawnee Traction Company started running a streetcar service in mid-1904.

That company was in the hands of a receiver by December 1905, and on February 16, 1906 was taken over by the Shawnee-Tecumseh Traction Co.

STT added a 6-mile interurban line to Tecumseh, Oklahoma starting service September 1, 1906, thus giving it about 12.5 miles of total trackage.

Built by the railroad to encourage citizens to travel by rail it opened in 1907.

Also continuing as a nationally known company which began in 1909 is Round House Overalls.

By 1910 STT had 19.21 miles of total trackage, and by 1917 it had extended its North Broadway streetcar line all the way to the campus of Oklahoma Baptist University.

Shawnee was an intended destination from Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, of the Webbers Falls, Shawnee and Western Railroad from 1911, but that line never got further west than Warner,...

Gregory's University) relocated to Shawnee from Sacred Heart in 1915, where it had been associated with a Catholic mission and school.

May 7, 1919, the city commission discussed constructing an air field, with several locations offered but settled on the old city farm where the fire horses were kept.

She won a majority of support but the strain took its toll and she died on February 2, 1920.

STT abandoned its streetcar and interurban operations in January 1927.

Shawnee's first sky scraper, the Hilton Phillips Hotel, later known as the Aldridge, was built in 1928 at the peak of the wealth and growth generated by the oil boom of the 1920s.

This stimulated development of the four-story Masonic Temple Office Building, constructed in 1929 across the 9th street from the Aldridge.

A convention hall attracted well-known celebrities of the 1910s and 1920s, such as Sarah Bernhardt but was razed by 1930 for a bus company barn.

While it continued to operate busses, that service too was suspended in 1931.

The Shawnee Milling Company, which had rebuilt after fires in 1934 and 1954, employs nearly 300 workers.

On July 6, 1935, Governor E.W.

After nearly 40 years, the railroad moved its shops to El Reno in 1937, but two major buildings remain.

With the coming of World War II, civilian fliers were automatically grounded in December 1941 until they took an oath of allegiance, were fingerprinted and presented a birth cer...

April 1943 the erection of the Shawnee Navy base was begun and by August the first sailors began arriving.

Then abruptly in March 1945 all Navy personnel and equipment were moved to the Clinton OK base because of the limited land available to expand.

The Shawnee Municipal Airport was returned to its original site in 1946 where it remains today.

Jonco, Inc., manufactured aviation products and employed nearly 1,000 in 1958.

In 1959 Smith and McKimmey went their separate ways and Smith opened a hamburger drive-in down Harrison Street installing a "call-in" system rather than the carhops.

The Antosh family has owned the company since 1964.

After operations of the Santa Fe Railroad ceased in 1971 the City of Shawnee took over the depot property.

Established in 1978 as a ministry of Liberty Baptist Church, Liberty Academy seeks to provide a biblically-based education with college-oriented content in core courses.

It was assigned to the Pottawatomie County Historical Society which began restoration of this depot in 1979, after it had stood vacant for two decades.

In 1980 Main Street was dominated by small retail establishments in which 80 percent are housed in buildings built prior to statehood in 1907.

The building was remodeled into a railroad and historical museum, which opened on May 30, 1982.

In 1987, a Japanese manufacturing company, TDK, opened a factory in Shawnee which locally manufactures ferrite magnets for electronic motors.

The early movies theaters are now gone except the Ritz Theater, which was the oldest continuously operating theater in Oklahoma until the theater's closure in 1989.

Since 1993, the O.E.

By 2000 only a large concrete tower remained, and it was demolished that year.

Over the years the football team has won the state title three times, the most recent was in 2003.

From 2008 to 2011, the Shawnee Regional Airport received nearly $8 million in state and federal grants for various runway and taxiway improvements.

Terminal On August 29, 2011, the City of Shawnee opened a new terminal building replacing the terminal built in the 1950s.

On the evening of May 19, 2013, a violent EF4 tornado hit the town resulting in two deaths.

The park also features the Splash Pad that opened in 2015 replacing the large Municipal swimming pool which had been built by the PWA in 1936.

As of 2016, the space that was once the park is on private property and occupied by a large pecan orchard.

Gregory's University suspended operations at the end of 2017, citing financial difficulties.

In December 2018, the sale of its Shawnee campus to Hobby Lobby was approved by the bankruptcy court.

In May 2019, OBU renamed the tract as the OBU Green Campus, both in honor of the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, and because the color green is one of OBU’s official univer...

The town was struck by two high-end EF2 tornadoes in the first four months of 2023.