Catesby, Oklahoma: The Townsite That Shrank to Two

01A Post Office Before There Was an Ellis County

The clearest record of Catesby's beginning is a postal one. The Chronicles of Oklahoma published a list of the first post offices within the state's boundaries in 1952. It records Catesby as established on February 18, 1902, in Woodward County, with Ella M. Rose as postmaster. Ellis County did not yet exist. It was formed after statehood, and the land around Catesby was later placed inside it, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

The February 1902 post office date rests on a primary record. For a place like this, a postmaster's appointment is often the nearest thing to a birth certificate.

Catesby lies in Section 2, Township 23 North, Range 26 West, in the northwest part of Ellis County, at 36°29′35″N, 99°57′46″W and an elevation of 2,392 feet. This is high plains country, far from any county seat.

02Who Was Catesby?

The name is unusual for the Oklahoma plains. OKGenWeb says the town was named for Catesby ap Roger Jones, whom it calls the "hero of the Mexican and Civil Wars." Wikipedia repeats the attribution. The original naming source is not cited in either account, so the connection rests on those secondary summaries. Why a western Oklahoma post office would carry that name is not recorded in the material that survives.

03What Happened to Catesby?

The record is thin here. No available source says what Catesby lived on, whether farming, ranching or trade. None gives a peak population, describes a business district, or explains why the town emptied. What survives is a sequence of dates.

The post office opened in February 1902 and closed on January 31, 1970, a postal life of about 68 years. The closing came as rural post offices across the plains were being consolidated.

A small detail from the final years survives in a 1969–70 state educational directory. It lists "Catesby 73837" as the mailing address of the Shattuck school board president. The entry does not show a school in Catesby. It does show that the name still served as a working address for people in the surrounding countryside as the post office neared its end.

04The Smallest Townsite in Oklahoma

Today Catesby is classed as an unincorporated community. The Oklahoma Historical Society's entry for Ellis County lists it that way, alongside Peek and Harmon. Wikipedia also calls it "a legal town site," a phrase suggesting the original plat still exists on paper even though no municipal government does.

The two residents reported at the 2002 centennial are the latest population figure on record. The number is more than two decades old, and it comes from a single source without a citation. It is still the only measure of how far the place had fallen from whatever it was in the early twentieth century.

05What Remains of Catesby Today

What remains is mostly a name on the map, a spot on the Shattuck NW USGS quadrangle, and a few institutional traces. The Catesby United Methodist Church is listed as closed on May 6, 2023. The listing shows 30 professing members and gives a mailing address in Laverne, not Catesby. The church was apparently the last organized body to carry the town's name.

Cemetery records add a small complication. One Ellis County cemetery site notes that Poplar Grove Cemetery, in neighboring Beaver County, was often called "Catesby Cemetery." That suggests the name was once used for a wider rural neighborhood, not only a cluster of buildings. It is a single-source note, and the cemetery lies outside Ellis County.

TravelOK treats Catesby as one of the Ellis County ghost towns, though it can point visitors only to OKGenWeb for "limited information." The post office is long closed. The few people who still live nearby receive their mail from other towns. Anyone driving to the coordinates should expect open plains and a name that outlived its town.