So, in the meantime, I followed the state road 55 west to the community of Retrop in the southwest corner of Washita County.
Apparently the community was first settled in 1896. A settler from Iowa, Ira J. Porter applied to have a post office established in town in his name. The Postmaster General approved the application. There was, however, already a station named Porter over in Indian Territory. So, in the interest of time, the Post Office Department reversed the spelling and sent back the approval for a post office named "Retrop". The community kept the name and the post office operated there from 1900 to 1908. There is apparently not much left in old Retrop today. The community held on through the dust bowl years, but most folks moved on or to a newer community nearby.
This is a picture of the old Retrop general store:
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| Courtesy: redriverhistorian.com |
Now, in the farm land at the intersection of highway 55 and highway 6 there is a permanent reminder of the community set up on the roadside:
The Retrop Marker:
"Dedicated to the pioneers who settled this community..."
5 comments:
I love the names in this county and imagining how the towns came about. Friendship - sounds like a welcoming place at least more so than generic sounding Colony. Some sound like they were named for some well connected banker/government official (Foss, Scheidel) and others for some fellow's wife or favorite cow (Shelly, Bessie). Then there are the funny twin towns (Wood and Redwood / Port and Portland); I kind of wonder if people were always saying things like, "Oh, great, I got that guys mail from Wood again. When will the mailman get it right? This is Redwood, not Wood." And then neither Port nor Portland seem like they are all that near a waterway. I am curious if the residents of Rocky and Rainy appreciated their names all that much - must have made it hard for their tourism bureaus, but perhaps easier than the town of Sully. And then there's Retrop, I never heard of Trop, but I guess it was good enough to do it again.
Oh, and I almost forgot Korn. Clearly the residents here weren't ortographobic. Either that or the town was part of some silly music industry PR scheme. Maybe something similar happened in Hefner although I don't really want to speculate about that one.
I should have specified, but this map was from 1895 when non-Indians were forming towns and starting to claim their stakes in the reservation lands. Some of the towns have expired, some have grown and a lot more than I would have thought have dwindled to almost nothing.
Absolutely fantastic!
What a treasure!!
So I could have lived in Troofsrema right now. mmm.
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