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Concept
Stilwell, Oklahoma
Summary
Stilwell / ᏍᏗᎳᏪᎵ is a city located in the sovereign territory of the Cherokee Nation. It is also the county seat of Adair County, Oklahoma. The population was 3,700 as of the 2020 U.S. census, a decline of 6.7 percent from the 3,949 population recorded in 2010. The Oklahoma governor and legislature proclaimed Stilwell as the "Strawberry Capital of the World” in 1949, but the role of strawberries in the local economy has diminished significantly since then. Today, residents of Stilwell are among the poorest and most impoverished in the United States. Stilwell also serves as a gateway to Lake Tenkiller and Adair Park, formerly called Adair State Park before it was defunded.
Stilwell's history began in 1838 as an end point of the Trail of Tears, with the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of thousands of Indigenous people to the Stilwell area. The trail was called nu na da ul tsun yi in Cherokee language, or "the place where they cried". The U.S. federal government set up a “disbandment depot” outside what is present-day Stilwell in the early months of 1839 to distribute food and supplies to the newly arrived Indigenous people. Those with resources quickly left to settle across the rest of Indian Territory, but the sickest and poorest stayed in the Stilwell area, close to the safety of the depot.
The U.S. government opened the Stilwell area to American settlers in 1893. The Kansas City Southern Railway built a rail line through what is present-day Stilwell in 1896. The municipality developed because of the rail line and it was incorporated as a town on January 2, 1897. The town was named after Arthur Stilwell, founder of the Kansas City Southern Railway. By the turn of the twentieth century, white settlers outnumbered the Cherokee people.
As early as 1901, Stilwell and Westville, in anticipation of Oklahoma statehood, vied for the role of county seat. When Adair County was formed in 1907, Westville was identified as the county seat, due partly to its location at the intersection of two major railroads: the Kansas City Southern Railway and the St.
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