Norman 1889-1949

On April 22 1889, the federal government opened the unassigned lands in central Oklahoma for settlement. Entrepreneurs, cattleman, and farmers, all seeking new opportunities, stacked their claim to town lots or 160-acre homesteads. From their tents on Main Street, businessmen started to sell their wares. Tents soon gave way to wooden shacks and, finally, two-story brick buildings. By the beginning of the 20th century, Norman was a bustling frontier town that quickly matured into a trade center, a county seat, and a university town. In the 1940s, Norman became the home of the Naval Air Technical Training Center, a naval base constructed to train navy pilots and ground support crews for World War II.

Click on the books to purchase from the Cleveland County Historical Society, all proceeds go the Society for the upkeep of the Moore-Lindsay Historical House Museum.

Norman’s Navy Years:1942-1859.

In 1944, A.L. Simon, a sailor at the Norman Naval Air Station, illustrated a booklet,“On the Beach” about Navy life in Norman Oklahoma. The title he chose reflected the irony of the US Navy establishing two bases in a land locked prairie town in 1942.The initial activation of the Navy bases (1942-1945) and the reactivation (1952-1959) greatly increased the employment rate and the economy in Norman. Economic enhancement from the naval installations and Norman commerce offered citizens a much needed economic boost after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The story of Norman Navy Years, 1942-1959 is told through photographs and memorabilia house in the Cleveland County Historical Society Archives.

Norman started as mainly a farming community. After initial settlement, farmers experimented with different crops to determine what would grow in the regions soil and climate. As many of the settlers came from southern states, they were familiar with cotton and found that the region was suited for the growth of cotton. The above picture is of Norman on “cotton day,” usually a Saturday, when growers brought their cotton into the gin. A busy time on Norman’s main street.Picture taken around the turn of the twentieth century.

Huge hanger were constructed on Naval Air Station, north base. Biplanes, that the sailors practiced in were stored in the hangers, especially during sever Oklahoma weather. There were 11,000 people who resided in Norman in 1940. The establishment of two naval bases brought another 20,000 people to Norman. For residence to see the service men flying over Norman in the biplanes must have been exciting and yet, perhaps, a nervous time, since all knew these men were practicing to become aviators, who would one day fly off of such aircraft carriers as the Midway.