PARKS & RECREATION
Key Assets: Jefferson County’s seat, Waurika, is genuinely and uniquely the only county seat located directly on the 98th Meridian in the entire state of Oklahoma – a historically significant line that once separated the Chickasaw Nation from the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Reservation before Waurika’s founding; the town was established when that reservation opened for settlement on August 6, 1901, and its name, from an American Indian word meaning “clear (or pure) water,” was incorporated in May 1903; Waurika became the Jefferson County seat following a county election in 1912; the town’s historic Rock Island Depot, purchased by the City of Waurika in 1987 and lovingly restored by community volunteers who raised local matching funds to secure a $120,000 state library grant, now doubles as both the public library and a genuine railroad heritage site, with Italian marble floors and an artifact room of railroad memorabilia; each April, Waurika hosts its genuinely famous and long-running “Fang-tastic” Rattlesnake Hunt, now in its 64th year as of 2026 – a lively, only-in-Oklahoma festival featuring live diamondback rattlesnake handling demonstrations in a snake pit, a photo booth with a live rattlesnake, deep-fried rattlesnake meat concessions, snake meat and hide sales, a carnival, and a guided community snake hunt, all organized by the Waurika Volunteer Fire Department; Waurika Lake, an 80-mile-shoreline, 10,000-acre U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir completed in 1973, supplies water to Lawton, Duncan, Comanche, Temple, and Waurika itself, and offers fishing, boating, and camping; note that the town’s former Chisholm Trail Historical Museum, which once documented the historic cattle trail’s passage through the area, has since closed – it should not be recommended as a current attraction
Notes: Waurika’s genuine, decades-running “Fang-tastic” Rattlesnake Hunt – now in its 64th year – is one of the most singularly memorable annual festivals found anywhere in this project.