Located in Kay County, Kaw City is situated in the Ox Bow Bend of the Arkansas River twelve miles east of U.S. Highway 77 on State Highway 11. The town was established by the Kaw City Townsite Company, which included William M. Jenkins (fifth governor of Oklahoma Territory), N. F. Frazier, C. W. Carey, and W. E. Brown. The sale of town lots began on July 4, 1902. Advertised as “the finest Townsite in Oklahoma, having as a place for business land as level as a floor with gently sloping upland for residences,” it was bordered on the north by the Kaw (Kansa) Reservation and on the east by the Osage Reservation. Situated in a fertile and productive farming and cattle region, Kaw City was connected with outside markets when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built their line through the town. Completed in 1903, the train depot served as a shipping point for thousands of bushels of corn and other farm produce. Hundreds of carloads of Texas cattle moved through Kaw City into the grazing lands of the Osage Reservation for fattening prior to being transported to market.

From the town’s inception, building progressed rapidly. Kaw City soon had a bank, a newspaper, two lumberyards, and a mill. A wagon bridge built across the Arkansas River to the north increased trade from the area known as Kaw Country. A post office was established on September 12, 1902, and a one-room school opened with fifty-six children in November 1902. At 1907 statehood, population stood at 486.

by Annette Pittman