Durant, Oklahoma

Durant (/duːrænt/) is a city in Bryan County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 18,589 in the 2020 census. It is the home of the headquarters of the Choctaw Nation, and is the largest settlement on the reservation, ranking ahead of McAlester and Poteau. Durant is the principal city of the Durant Micropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 46,067 in 2020. Durant is also part of the Dallas–Fort Worth Combined Statistical Area, anchoring the northern edge.

The city was founded by Dixon Durant, a Choctaw who lived in the area, after the MK&T railroad came through the Indian Territory in the early 1870s. It became the county seat of Bryan County in 1907 after Oklahoma statehood.

Durant is home to Southeastern Oklahoma State University and the headquarters of the Choctaw Nation. The city is officially known as the Magnolia Capital of Oklahoma. The city and its micropolitan are a major part of the Texoma region.

The Durant area was once claimed by both Spain and France before officially becoming part of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase and Adams–Onís Treaty. During the 1820s and 1830s the area was designated as part of the Choctaw Nation in the southern Indian Territory. During the Indian removals the Choctaws followed the Choctaw Trail of Tears from their ancestral homeland in Mississippi and Alabama into this area. The Choctaw Nation originally extended from the Mexican border in the west (now part of the Texas panhandle) to the Arkansas Territory in the east, from the Red River in the south to the South Canadian River in the north. In 1855, the Choctaw and Chickasaws formally divided their land into two separate nations, with Durant remaining in Choctaw territory on the east. Chickasaw land extended west to the boundary that would divide Indian Territory from Oklahoma Territory after passage of the Oklahoma Organic Act in 1890.

Pierre Durant and his four sons, all of French-Choctaw origin, made the journey up the Trail of Tears on the way to the southeastern part of the Choctaw Nation in 1832. The brothers, grown, with families of their own, established homesteads from the Arkansas line to Durant. One son, Fisher, married to a full-blood Choctaw, found a beautiful location for a home between Durant's present Eighth and Ninth avenues. At the time of Durant's founding it was located in Blue County, a part of the Pushmataha District of the Choctaw Nation.

Fisher Durant's son Dixon Durant is recognized as the founder of Durant and is honored as its namesake. A minister, businessman and civic leader, Dixon Durant is credited with pastorates in local Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist churches. He established the first store selling general merchandise in 1873, around the time of the 1872 creation of the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (Katy Railroad) siding at Durant, which was the initial impetus for establishing the community.

The Missouri-Kansas and Texas Railway (also known as the MKT or "Katy") had already laid a line through the area that would become Durant by November 1882. A wheelless boxcar was parked on the siding there and named "Durant Station". Dixon Durant erected the first building, adjacent to the boxcar, where he opened a general store in 1873. The first post office, also named as Durant Station, Indian Territory, opened February 20, 1879, but closed on July 11, 1881. A.E. Fulsom was postmaster. The U.S. Postal Service re-established the post office at the site as Durant on March 8, 1882, dropping the word "station" from the name. Beginning in 1882, the area was simply called Durant.

W.H. Hilton was elected the first mayor of Durant.