Haskell County, Oklahoma

Haskell County is a county located in the southeast quadrant of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 12,769. Its county seat is Stigler. The county is named in honor of Charles N. Haskell, who was the first governor of Oklahoma.HistoryThe area now comprising Haskell County was created at statehood from the former San Bois County of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory. An election in 1908 picked Stigler over Keota and Whitefield as the county seat.Coal mining in the early 20th century created jobs and railroads to southern Haskell County. San Bois Coal Company built more than four hundred company houses in McCurtain and Chant (two towns that eventually merged into one) for their miners. In 1912 a large, underground explosion rocked the Number Two mine at McCurtain, killing seventy-three miners and bankrupting the San Bois Company. The McCurtain disaster and the declining demand for coal in the 1920s halted underground coal mining in the county, though strip mining still continued. The Lone Star Steel Company became the county's leading coal producer. Haskell County was the source of 20 percent of Oklahoma's coal production between 1950 and 1980.Agriculture was the most important component of the county economy in the early 20th Century. Cotton was the most important crop, followed by corn and oats. The collapse of cotton prices and the Great Depression caused a drop in population as well as farm acreage. In 1934 the Federal Emergency Relief Administration helped over 85 percent of Haskell County's population. Ranching supplanted farming, which was forced to diversify. By 1964, livestock accounted for about 70 percent of the county's revenues.