Small Towns in Oklahoma: Kosoma | JudyD

Small communities built by Choctaw heritage and early white settlers

Between Antlers and Clayton on Highway 2, Kosoma is a small community in southeastern Oklahoma. Marked now only by a cemetery and a church, Kosoma was once a thriving lumber town along the Kiamichi Railroad line.

When the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway built its line through the Choctaw Nation, there was already a permanent settlement where modern-day Kosoma is located. The new railroad connected Fort Smith, Arkansas and Paris, Texas and ran along fairly parallel to the Kiamichi River in Pushmataha County.

Kosoma Oklahoma cemetery just off Highway 2Photo byAuthor

Several place markers along Highway 2 are sites of former train stations and small communities.

Small communities thrived in this area due to the Kiamichi Railroad and timber businessPhoto byAuthor

Some, like Kosoma, had stores where general goods could be purchased. Kosoma, however, also boasted a hotel and saloon.

What’s left of the old Kosoma hotel and saloonPhoto byAuthor

The word Kosoma is Choctaw and means “place of the stinking water” because of a sulphur spring nearby.

Wikipedia goes on to say this about Kosoma:

The sparsely-populated area, at that time known as Jack’s Fork County, a part of the Pushmataha District of the Choctaw Nation, in the Indian Territory,[3] was home to Choctaw Indians who farmed or subsisted on the land. Few roads or trails existed, but with the railroad came…