What is Pumpkin Center, Oklahoma, and why are there 4 of them? The stories behind the places

Pumpkin Center, Oklahoma, is simultaneously among the smallest communities in Oklahoma and also among the most numerous.

That's because there appear to be at least four unincorporated communities in Oklahoma with the name Pumpkin Center. Sparsely populated, these are typically rural areas recognized by map surveyors and property assessors, but aren’t legally governed by municipalities.

Some of the Pumpkin Center communities trace their history back to statehood, or even beyond. But how each community came to be in Oklahoma, and why they took the name, is something of a mystery.

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Pumpkin Center in Comanche County 'a good intersection for business'

The first Pumpkin Center community in Oklahoma to come up immediately in an online search is the one in Comanche County. Google Maps says it is near the intersection of State Highways 65 and 7, about 10 miles east of Lawton.

Jeff Coody, 62, the owner of Pumpkin Center Autos, no longer resides on the land passed down through his family directly outside of Lawton, but he recalls visiting a Pumpkin Center Store in the northeast part of the area when he was 6 or 7 years old.

Coody also said his father, Dale Coody, maintained acreage in Pumpkin Center for many years, operating two dairy farms on the property and even importing North African ostriches to the site.

“It’s always been a really good intersection for business,” Coody said. “There are still tons of people around there now, a couple of hundred people in a 5-mile radius of the Pumpkin Center area and the (nearby) Cox Store community.”

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Wayne Abshere was another well-known entrepreneur in Comanche County best remembered by locals as the face of several businesses in the Lawton area, including Wayne’s Burger Bar, Wayne’s Drive Inn and Charley’s Drive Inn — all of which still exist in some form.

And there was even a Pumpkin Center Cafe, serving burgers and pork chops out of its location at 15703 SE Lee Blvd. near Lawton, before closing down in 2013.

“But I honestly can’t tell you how that Pumpkin Center community started, because I don’t know for sure,” said Coody, who now lives in Texas four miles south of the Red River. “The people who probably would’ve known would’ve been my father and his father and their contemporaries, and they’re all dead. I just have memories of being told it goes back to statehood.”

Pumpkin Center? Pumpkin Hollow? Punkin Holler? Cherokee County can't agree.

The most well-known of the Pumpkin Center communities, however, seems to be the Pumpkin Center in Cherokee County, off U.S. 51 about 14 miles east of Tahlequah. It is now mainly represented by a cemetery of the same name.

“A number of early Cherokee families, such as Hair, Kirk, Pritchett and Pumpkin lived near here and are buried in the cemetery,” said historian Gary D. Courtney.

Tahlequah area resident and tribal citizen Ernestine Pumpkin said the Pumpkin Center area is indeed her family’s land allotment. Other locals affectionately call the area “Pumpkin Hollow,” or alternatively “Punkin Holler.”

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Genealogist David Cornsilk, of the Cherokee Nation, grew up southeast of the area and remembers attending funerals at the Pumpkin Center Cemetery in “Pumpkin Holler.” Archival maps from the Bureau of Land Management in the 1890s show that the area also was once called Baumgartner Hollow, but it’s the Pumpkin Hollow vs. Center debate that still captures the imagination of locals.

“My entire life the question of Pumpkin Center (versus) Pumpkin Hollow has raged among old-timers much like the chicken or the egg,” Cornsilk said. “You want to start an argument? Raise the question of Center vs. Hollow. I don’t argue about it, I just let folks believe what they want to believe.”

There’s even a Tahlequah-based country band that carries the name Pumpkin Hollow.

Muskogee County's Pumpkin Center "split in two" as military base, wildlife area

The historian Courtney also recalled an additional location called Pumpkin Center among the fertile grounds of Greenleaf Creek, along the boundary between Cherokee County and Muskogee County. This former Pumpkin Center community could be found about 14 miles east of the city of Muskogee.

Thanks to developments during the 1940s, Muskogee County’s Pumpkin Center was essentially split in two and became what is technically now part of the Cherokee Wildlife Management Area and part of the military base called Camp Gruber.

“From what I have learned on it, there was multiple general stores, a blacksmith shop and a school,” said Tyler Delmedico, a wildlife technician who has researched the area extensively. “The old cement steps to the school are still there, as well as many rock foundations from old houses and buildings from the 1800s and early 1900s.”

Most people living in the area would have been tribal citizens, rural and self-sustaining, historians say. World War II, however, drastically changed all of that.

“The government sought to build more military bases, and this area was chosen for one,” Delmedico said. “60,000 acres were claimed by the government, and families were forced to move and given very little for their properties. That was the end of Pumpkin Center.”

Okmulgee County's Pumpkin Center just 'a spot on the map'

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Scant data is available on the Pumpkin Center in Okmulgee County, about 10 miles north of the city of Okmulgee. What is there indicates it might also have been a self-sufficient farming community at one point. But it appears to no longer exist in any meaningful way.

Okmulgee County Assessor Ed Johnson said he’s aware of "a Pumpkin Center area" at the intersection of Liberty and 330 Road ― and not much else.

“There’s a spot on the map that says Pumpkin Center, but when you go out there, there’s really nothing there,” Johnson told The Oklahoman. “It’s just rural land here now. There’s one farmhouse, and that appears to be it.”

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Historian Greg Boyd, who lives in a Texas county that boasts a similarly named "Punkin Center," said he is not certain if there's any direct connection between the Pumpkin Center in his state and the ones in Oklahoma.

“Many small local communities, settlements and stores have come and gone over the years, such as Veal’s Station where Alfalfa Bill Murray was from,” said Boyd, a member of the Parker County Heritage Society. “And this one will require a little digging to arrive at a documented consensus.”

But he told The Oklahoman there might be some relation between the names and the plentiful gourds grown in both states.

“They could have had a situation where they just named it after the produce they were growing a lot of in the area,” Boyd said. “The ground here in Parker County (Texas) is very fertile, and it grows cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkins and gourds of all kinds. So it could have been a situation where they just named it whatever made sense.”

The Oklahoman previously reported that Pumpkin Center Store employees near Lawton told staff writers about anecdotes they’d heard of how the community got its name.

“The one they like best is about an old man who was driving up the highway in an old rickety pickup truck, filled to the top with pumpkins,” wrote Gary Horcher. “The man’s truck broke down and he had no money to pay the mechanic. Legend has it he sold the pumpkins to passing motorists to pay his bill and it's been Pumpkin Center ever since.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Different Pumpkin Center communities tell 4 unique stories of Oklahoma