Jumbo, Oklahoma

Jumbo is an unincorporated community in western Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, United States,[1] 10 miles north of Miller.

[2] Prior to Oklahoma's statehood, Jumbo was located in Jack's Fork County, a part of the Pushmataha District of the Choctaw Nation, in the Indian Territory.

[6] The line stretched from Jumbo south through the Impson Valley, rounding the foot of Parker Mountain into Moyers, where it connected with the railhead at the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway.

[7] This remained the case through recent decades, when the countryside around Jumbo emptied due to lack of economic opportunities and its churches, school, and post office closed.

The school still partially stands, although the back half was bulldozed during the 1990s by a local landowner for safety reasons, who cleared the land for cattle to graze.

Immediately prior to World War II, a local farmer gathered the tombstones, stacked them under a tree, and ploughed the property for use as a field.

A third plane crash-landed successfully at Jumbo, in a field known locally as the Bedford meadow, owned by farmer and rancher Bill Perrin.

In recent years the territory to the west of Jumbo has been incorporated into McGee Creek State Park, particularly the area of Wildcat and Bugaboo canyons.