It wasn’t possible to take a photograph of Foraker’s downtown district.  There is none.

Dan Kala

Dan was on a motorcycle tour of the grasslands of Oklahoma when he reached the quiet town, if not the location of Foraker, Oklahoma. His ride started in Kansas and became more desolate the more south he went. When crossing into the sooner state, the building disappeared, human activity vanished, and it got quiet. As ‘the hot breath of the winds Oklahoma hit him,’ it showed how hard living in such a place can be. 

The grasslands of Oklahoma are no easy place to live in by any modern standard. It spread over 2,000 square miles of Eastern Oklahoma with almost nothing inside. It’s very unique and significant to Oklahoma Ecology. Inside the middle is a protected area with free-roaming bison and one of the world’s most well-known protected tallgrass prairies.

Foraker is a small, incorporated community in the rural Osage. It sits on County Road N3610, around 12 miles north and west of Pawhuska. Its name comes from the Ohio Senator Joseph B. Foraker. Its history is similar to that of the states. Established in 1906, it flourished until 1930, when its people left for multiple reasons and never returned; its population peaked at 415 in 1910. The population has steadily decreased and has now dwindled to 19.

The town is considered a ghost town in Oklahoma. A long-time resident said, “Stores gone, post office gone, train gone, school gone, oil gone, boys and girls gone – the only thing not gone is graveyard, and it git bigger.” The graveyard mentioned here is around 2 miles east of the town intersection.
The area of Foraker was reserved before the allotment of the Osage nation. Under the Department of the Interior, 160 acres were plotted alongside the Midland Valley railroad, which turned into the Osage Railway and the Muskogee Road. The Department of the Interior then had the plots of land in the township auctioned in 1906. Unlike elsewhere in the Osage, buyers maintained their property’s mineral rights.

Foraker was known for its agriculture at this point in its history. It was producing corn, alfalfa, and wheat. But due to it lying in the world-famous grasslands of Oklahoma, its main export was beef cattle. The area was ideal for large-scale cattle racing. During one six might period, 15,000 were shipped from Foraker. After the agricultural boom, economic development subsided, and things calmed down. But 1920, the Burbank Oil field was discovered, creating a slight jump in activity.

In 1920, the village’s population reached 394, and with the oil boom happening across the Osage, the town became a hub for petroleum Equipment since it lay directly on the railroad. This increased the town’s growth slightly, and the railway was extended 12 miles south to Shidler in 1922. At this point, Foraker had ninty four productive oil and gas wells operating, accumulating $169,000 in sales, decent for a community that took over an hour to get to from the closet town, Shilder.

Forkaer was in its heyday during this period. It had three Newspapers: Forker Tribune, the Foraker Free Press, and the Foraker Sun. The town had sidewalks, a water sytem, two banks, hardware, food stores, cattle equipment, grain elevators, two churches, and a fully functioning village.
But as the Osage Oil boom slowed, Foraker died rapidly. In 1930, the population was at 310. The railways were forced to shut down due to low traffic volumes; this caused a significant downfall for the already struggling town. Around the 1950s, the Foraker business district fell vacant due to low oil volumes and agricultural revenue, and the population fell to 52. Foraker is now an intersection with a sign in the middle of Oklahoma. It is considered a ghost town, a place that once was a thriving community

That was my country—Terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness.

Georgia O’Keefe

I visited Foraker during the fall of 2023 when Oklahoma’s hot breath calmed, and the Dakota’s frosty winds appeared on the horizon. I arrived and parked near the cemetery located east of the town. I decided to run around the few roads that exist here. Two main roads run into town: CR4551, which runs from North to South, and CR650, which runs east to west. Inside of it are a few side roads with the 21 residents of the town.
Now, you might be asking why I was in the middle of the grassland of Oklahoma, and to that, I have no answer. There was something that intrigued me about just grass, and just grass. Being from Boston, I have just been fascinated by the ‘Wild West.’ Now, living in Oklahoma, I see the way of life others I find so different. Wide open cattle ranches with nothing are very interesting, and I am still trying to figure out why.

Once I arrived after a two-and-a-half-hour drive, I put on my running shoes and headed to the intersection. It was two miles from the country, and I was going there, for one of the first times ever, I heard nothing. No wind, birds, people, cars, or anything. It was slightent. I looked to my right while approaching the town center, and there was a lonely pumpjack in its endless cycle of up and down. It was rusty and worn down, looking like it hadn’t had a friend for a long time. As I arrived in Foraker, I described that only pumpjack is how I would describe Foraker.

It was a lonely intersection; I stopped my jog. I looked at that rusty, worn-down stop sign baking under Oklahoma’s hot sun. I took a left and continued up to the sign that said Foraker; it, too, was rusty and worn down. There was no state government sign saying the population, no directions, just a seemingly awkward invitation to stop and say hello, but at the same time, understanding you are busy and feeling sorry for yourself. A breeze hit my face, and I realized how far this place was. A gas station was located outside the town.

I didn’t see a single person, not one. I wish I had seen someone. I would have asked them questions and enjoyed conversing with them. I ran on all the streets inside this half-mile square of a community. Each house was well built and gorgeous, seemingly beaming with life, but not at all. It was quiet; it looked like nobody was home for a while. A few dogs barked at me, all on chains, and they didn’t see the effort in chasing me. By the looks of it, they had never seen someone out on a run before.

There is no describing [the prairies]…They inspire feelings to unique, so distinct from anything else, so powerful, yet vague and indefinite, as to defy description, while they invite the attempt.

John C. Van Tramp, Prairie and Rocky Mountain Adventures (1860)

As I kept running, I turned onto Cr650 and finally heard some noise in the distance; a car was coming. I slowed my pace down so I could wait for it. When it got to me, a ranch truck zoomed past me like I-35 in Dallas. People here had lived too; this wasn’t Mars; they had cows to tend to and beef to sell. I didn’t blame them. I finished my run back to my car, 10 miles in just over an hour. I finished it, and nothing had changed. As I stopped breathing, lasting silence returned; I heard nothing. I don’t know how I felt like something was going to change or someone would talk to me. I felt this vital urge that something interesting would happen to me in a place with almost nothing interesting. I felt the intense sun on my skin and the gravel dirt sticking to my body due to the roads.

I wondered how this type of place survives what it takes to live here. Even to get fuel, it is over a 30-minute ride. I assume households have large tanks topped off monthly if possible; I tried to brainstorm ideas of how living here can be made more accessible.

So, what could we do here to help improve rural communities? You can look at quality life things that one sees in a city, schools, access to food, water, and fuel. But, the thing with towns like Foraker is they are below a threshold that nothing can survive in a town like that. You call this the Development Threshold.

Foraker lives well below the DT (development threshold). It is the lowest level of population that a town can have to survive. It means enough people to operate a gas station, convenience store, or a few businesse

The DT fluctuates from region to region and isn’t an exact number, or at least I still need to figure it out. But for example, if a town is above it, it at least has economic development, which can grow with the correct place-making. Below this threshold, a town is just a collection of people with nothing going on. The DT is around 100-250 people in Oklahoma. An interesting thing I find in Oklahoma is that the more rural it is, the higher the DT, such as in Western Oklahoma. There are fewer towns, meaning more people associated with larger ones, making it more likely they will be above the DT. But then, when you reach the maximum point of rural living in Oklahoma, find places such as Foraker that are so rural they are below the DT. To illustrate this quickly, I made a graph demonstrating the development threshold.

The graph starts at the top left corner, with the highest range of economic development with the highest population. As you move more to the left, you begin to get less economic development. You reach a flat spot around midway; this is when a town starts to see an increased cycle in business survival rate. Businesses start and close down shortly after due to decreased anticipated demand. But once the population falls a little more, you reach the DT threshold point. Below this, the town’s economic development drops quickly, losing population and business. It then plateaus; this is when there is thought of business opening up, but it often stalls and never happens. The curve after this is where the Foraker sits; far below the DT, there is no chance of any oncoming development.

The grass plains of Oklahoma and Foraker remain vital to the state’s cultural, ecological, and economic importance. The conservation of this land and the responsible management, while improving people’s quality of life, should remain. By supporting these efforts through biodiversity, agriculture, ranching, environmental challenges, and water quality, Foraker and the grass plains of the Osage can and will remain.

There was something about the prairie for me—it wasn’t where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn’t ever stop living under that big sky.

Pam Houston, Cowboys are My Weakness (1992)

I recommend you go to Foraker; the moral of this story is finding beauty in absolute nothing.