Music: Rosi Golan-Can't Go Back From the Oklahoma Historical Society: The Alfalfa County community called Jet began to emerge in the prairie plains of the recently opened Cherokee Outlet in the mid-1890s. At the opening in 1892 six bachelor brothers, Joseph, Trigg, Newt, Warner, John, and Richard Jett homesteaded adjacent land parcels around the Barrel Springs, about two miles from the present town. Named for them, the present community of Jet (spelled with one t) is located south of Great Salt Plains in the east-central part of the county, twelve miles east-southeast of Cherokee, the county seat, and is accessed by U.S. Highway 64. The Jett brothers constructed buildings on Dick Jett's land and opened a store. Jet received a postal designation in June 1894 with Warner Jett as postmaster. A nearby sod house soon served as a school for farmers' children. The town of Jet was incorporated in 1900 from part of Saline Township. In December 1905 the Frisco Townsite Company of the Denver, Enid and Gulf Railroad (DE&G;, later acquired by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) surveyed a new townsite for Jet. It was reestablished two miles west of the original town on 160 acres in the adjoining corners of the homesteads of Joseph Todd, Frank Cary, Charles George, and Melvin Brummett. As the DE&G; built its way northwest from Enid through Alfalfa County to Kansas, service was extended to Jet and Cherokee. By January 11, 1906, according to the Jet Visitor, "the moving of business houses to the new town [was] now in full blast." New brick buildings rapidly appeared, and about one hundred others had been moved from the old site or built in the new one by the middle of February. By April, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Mennonite congregations regularly met. By August there were seven general stores, two hotels, two banks, two grain elevators, and a two-room school under construction. At 1907 statehood Jet sheltered 213 people.

• published: 01 Aug 2014
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