This is an article in the Guthrie News Leader’s ongoing series regarding economic and social changes in Logan County in the 21st Century, and how the county’s communities can handle these changes and stay strong.
Coyle sits all alone, mostly quiet and forlorn. State Highway 33, which used to run through town as Main Street, was rerouted by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation in 2006. So as a result, no one is “just passing through” any more…one must go to Coyle on purpose.
There are almost no businesses here. A recently-opened auto repair shop now exists on Main Street, and while busy mostly in fulfilling contracts to regional government agencies to service their vehicles, it stands alone. There are no stores, no banks, no gas stations, no service businesses, no other retail or commercial business of any kind. Indeed, aside from the auto shop, all other historic commercial buildings are so dilapidated that they barely stand.
The lone exceptions are the town’s post office and the nowdefunct Cimarron Bend Casino, owned by the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma. The historic building housing the casino still stands and is in excellent shape; it was fully renovated when the tribe opened it a few years back. However, the casino closed with the COVID lockdowns and hasn’t reopened since. In fact, the tribe owns multiple casinos but doesn’t even bother to list Coyle’s casino on the website, so any chance of the casino reopening appears as forlorn as the town itself. What might have been something to draw some commercial traffic to Coyle has become just another ghost of its past.
Coyle’s civic institutions are seemingly likewise moribund. With almost no commercial base, the town has very little tax revenue. Coyle has no police force and hasn’t for several years; the town’s law enforcement needs are covered by the Logan County Sheriff ’s Office, which don’t include any regular patrols aside from a deputy posted at the Coyle school as a resource officer. The town government has been working to secure some assistance from the police department in Langston, immediately next-door to Coyle. However, almost no police presence of any kind is seen around town. The town’s fire department is volunteer and subsists on a combination of annual fees paid by residents, Federal grants, and fundraisers.
Coyle has never been a large town; US Census records indicate that the town has never been much beyond 400 residents. It peaked in 1940 with 440 and the records from 2020 indicate that it currently stands at 350. But Coyle was once thriving; it had three banks, two general stores, a drugstore, a hotel, a hardware store, a furniture store, two service stations, an opera house, a Masonic lodge, and even its own newspaper, the Cimarron Valley Clipper. Coyle still maintains its old waterworks, and has a separate Water District in addition to the town government. There are visible reminders all over, in and around town, of what Coyle once was.
One could make a direct comparison to the town of Drummond, Oklahoma, southwest of Enid. Just over an hour from Coyle, it’s a mirror image in many ways. Drummond’s population has hovered right around 400 for decades, and the geographic sizes of the two towns are nearly identical. Likewise, it has never existed on a main highway and so it gets very little outside traffic. Both towns benefit from reasonablysized towns nearby: Coyle is 15 minutes from Guthrie and 25 minutes from Stillwater, while Drummond is 25 minutes from Enid. Most of the towns’ residents commute elsewhere to work, in spite of the surrounding agricultural base of both. The schools of Coyle and Drummond are in the same state classification, Class A, in the sports their schools play, and indeed, they often face each other in regional tournaments.
And yet, as Coyle languishes, Drummond has a bank, a coffee shop, a convenience store, a co-op, a small diner, and even a small ladies’ boutique, all of which keep regular business hours. Drummond’s school buildings are not extravagant, but they’re relatively new and in good shape. The walls in the common areas of the school are covered with trophies from the activities where Drummond excels: baseball, softball, basketball…and interestingly, Academic Bowl, in which Drummond has claimed multiple state championships over the past two decades.
In short, Drummond appears to be doing well, if not thriving. So it appears that Coyle could still be a similarly-thriving community, or at least, have a level of sustainability it does not currently appear to have... and yet, it doesn’t.
Granted, Coyle has sustained several blows to its economy over time; the collapse of the cotton industry after World War I closed out Coyle’s early agricultural base, making many local farms and the town’s two cotton gins unprofitable. But Coyle soldiered on. Then rail service through town ended in the 1950s. Still, Coyle stayed alive on local farming and ranching and the benefits of Highway 33. Old photos and satellite images attest to businesses in town that drew multiple cars to them into the early 2000s. And the hits taken by Coyle couldn’t be any worse than those of Drummond, or many other towns that continue to do well in the face of adversity. So what happened?
No current Coyle residents would speak on the record; they’re distrustful of reporters. But they all have opinions, and the general sentiment seems to be that two events of the past 10-15 years took the remaining spirit out of the town. First, as mentioned before, the town lost Highway 33. In reviewing the Oklahoma DOT’s upgrades of Highway 33, only Coyle and neighboring Langston completely lost their portions of the highway. With the loss of that traffic, folks who might have stopped and spent money in town, or even better, saw a nice little place with a future and decided to move in, all disappeared.
Second, a scandal resulting from a financial audit of the town government in 2018 left the town bereft of finances, already a significant problem due to lack of tax base. Additionally, the credibility of the town government was crushed, lingering challenges from closing out the audit and subsequent investigations drag on, and the town still is unable to procure any bonds that might help with needed infrastructure improvements one would expect of any municipality. Further, in the wake of the scandal, from the account of some of the locals, one of Coyle’s longtime families has essentially taken over the town’s governmental functions, given that the number of related residents are able to simply push them in for any open position in town elections. This has further eroded local trust in the ability of the town to govern itself and take care of citizens, and so it seems many citizens have simply decided to turn their back on the town and take care of themselves. Several even commented that “no one seems to care” Now for the most important question: can Coyle recover? Or is disincorporation the next inevitable step? Many residents indicated they would like to see something more in town to serve the locals’ needs, but don’t have much faith it would stay around long. They also comment that any attempts to make positive changes would simply be met with massive resistance, since many in town don’t want anything locally to change and are distrustful of outsiders who might come in “wanting to make all these changes”. Several locals attested to trying to get in positions to make improvements, only to give up in constant frustration with the local fear of change.
So it seems that even if new folks were moving in, a strong possibility with the return-tothe- country movement that has arisen with remote and hybrid work post-COVID, it may not be enough to crack the local shell and get good things done. Even without outside help, the locals would need to “bootstrap” the town, and that also seems doubtful, as yet another school bond issue failed to pass, to replace the school’s badly-aging elementary and junior high building. Granted, $24 million is a lot of money, but the town could desperately have used a local example of the citizens pulling together to invest in something for the town’s future. Alas, no.
Is it simply a matter of local pride and gumption? What sets apart a Coyle from a Drummond? It seems only Coyle’s residents know the answer, at least for Coyle. Many residents still believe it could work, and many still try to contribute as they can. The town’s annual fireworks display on Independence Day is fully funded from local contributions, and the town does have a few annual fundraisers that seem to draw well, so perhaps all is not yet lost. But change is going to move Coyle on, with or without their consent, so they’ll need to figure it out…and soon.