Stuart's Malaria Ditch

Stuart in Hughes County, Oklahoma has a nice little calaboose just south of downtown. But as the infrastructure nerd that I am, I was even more interested in the town's stone-lined drainage ditch.

It's more scenic than it sounds!

I visited the quiet town of Stuart, Hughes County, Oklahoma in the Choctaw Nation a few years back. Of course I took pictures of its old jail, erected in 1918. But what got my real attention was Stuart's incredibly impressive stone ditch that I found even more fascinating than its calaboose. The town had erected a sign about the jail, but not the ditch. Why did such a small town have such a fantastic ditch?

And down the weird rabbit hole I went, spending a Saturday morning researching drainage ditches.

A 1900 topographical map by the USGS that includes Stuart shows that it sits at the foot of the Shawnee Hills, surrounded by lots of creeks and sitting south of the Canadian River.

A History of Stuart

First, I consulted the Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History, which explained that Stuart was established in the 1890s as the town of Hoyuby but really came into being when the railroad came through. The article didn't mention any kinds of ditches, though.

So I did my own topographical look-see via the USGS. The town stands to the south of the Canadian River in a bit of a valley, surrounded by creeks. It's hardly noticeable, but the downtown buildings along Roosevelt Avenue and Ninth Street are on high ground; a block south, the landscape sinks and levels. This means that the cotton and lumber mills that were erected along Grand Avenue south of eighth street, as shown in a Clark Fire Insurance Map of 1906, experienced flooding and mud. The town's proximity to the Canadian River also didn't help matters.

In 1919, the town of Stuart developed its city ordinance, which mandated the establishment of electric lights, a municipal water supply. That plan, however, didn't take place immediately, which generated a bit of urgency from the town's newspaper, The Stuart Star. The newspaper's editor was a big proponent of the Good Roads Movement and a major town booster, and his nagging appeared to FINALLY have been answered in 1933, when the Civilian Works Administration planned on making a city waterworks project a reality.

The Stuart Star of 1920 was a Good Roads booster: the editor of the paper nagged its city that "Stuart needs modern Sidewalks, Electric Lights, and Waterworks" to make it appealing to growth.

The Clarkson fire insurance map from 1906 of Stuart, Hughes County, Oklahoma in the Choctaw Nation (OHS).

And Then, Nothing.

But here, history gets lost. I didn't find any newspaper accounts about a waterworks project Stuart after 1933. Holdenville, a few miles northwest of Stuart across the Canadian River, managed to obtain a waterworks -- and much of its original WPA-built infrastructure is still extant. But a great website that lists the WPA projects for Oklahoma, including for Hughes County, does not mention any projects completed at Stuart.

So was the ditch part of a waterworks? I doubted that -- I'm not aware of any ditches that carry drinking water. My further research in old newspapers found that in 1935, federal highway 270 between Stuart and Calvin was paved, and of course the project included drainage. In 1938, drainage projects around Yeager, northeast of Holdenville, conducted by the PWA (Public Works Administration) merited newspaper attention. In 1940, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) built "five miles of drainage structure" between Calvin and Stuart.

But the impressive stone ditch that encompasses Stuart, Hughes County, Oklahoma does not extend into Calvin (which is northwest of Stuart). Quite the opposite, in fact --- Stuart's impressive stone ditch extends to the northeast and runs aside the train tracks.

Hmmm.

The stone-lined ditch behind Stuart's city hall on Ninth Street (Google Maps).

The stone ditch makes a 90 degree bend on Eighth Street between Roosevelt and Grand Avenues in Stuart.

After passing by the calaboose and beneath Seventh Street, the ditch continues south along Grand Avenue in Stuart.

And then, Jackpot!

I continued to search for "drainage ditches" and "water works" and such around Stuart. Then, I discovered a breakthrough. A major article from the Holdenville Daily News of 1938 screamed that the "Stuart Lake Dam Breaks from Strain." This was apparently the second time this had happened. Stuart Lake was erected in 1934 by the FERA [Federal Emergency Relief Agency] program to "provide Stuart with a water supply," one of the "first communities in the county to systematically organize to take advantage of federal programs." But the lake drained in 1936 when the dam broke, which it apparently did again in 1938.

Stuart had a waterworks, or was trying to have one, but its lake wasn't stable. That's great... but it still doesn't explain the drainage ditch. Except that in the 1938 article about the calamity at Stuart Lake, a very interesting side note appeared: the town of Wetumka was saved from a similar inundation (not from the lake, but from the rains) due to its malaria ditch.

The Holdenville Daily News from February 1938 explained that a malaria control project, which built a drainage ditch at Wetumka (Hughes County, Oklahoma, Creek Nation), saved the city from floods.

OH EM GEE: A Malaria ditch! Of course!!!

In the first twenty years of the 20th century, the state of Oklahoma funded construction of "malaria ditches" to prevent the scourge of disease that mosquitos brought onto the population. Yes, Oklahoma was once a progressive state that took care of its citizens! When the Great Depression curtailed funding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal was able to step in. Federal funds supplied the wages for the workers, the state of Oklahoma and its counties the materials, and the communities the manpower who dug and erected stone-lined drainage ditches to prevent mosquito breeding grounds. A 1936 article from The Morning Tribute (Holdenville) explains it best: "The malaria control project of Stuart has become one of the county's largest single relief projects."

In other words, the beautiful stone ditch that encompass little Stuart in Hughes County, Oklahoma is an almost complete, and relatively intact, historic WPA project built to control malaria that appears to not have been documented anywhere except by Red River Historian! Even a historic survey of "sandstone canals" authorized by the Oklahoma Historical Society and conducted in 2022 didn't include Stuart.

Yay, me.

The Holdenville Daily News from August 1938 explains that the town of Stuart will see the construction of rock-lined malaria ditches, like those of Holdenville and Wetumka,