The Naming of Norman - Norman, Oklahoma - Oklahoma Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The Naming of Norman historical marker was one of three installed in the city in 2022 by the Historical Signage Project. It is at the south side of Norman, at the intersection of Lindsey and Classen, next to a parking lot.

Text on marker:

The Naming of Norman

In the spring of 1871, Kentuckian Abner Ernest Norman was hired as a chainman for a government survey crew working its way from the Red River to north of the Canadian River. he later was placed in charge of the crew, having studied math and surveying at an academy near Louisville. While in the area of what we now know as Norman, his crew camped at a spring south of the present-day intersection of Lindsey Street and Classen Boulevard. Near the camp, the bark was scraped off one side of a large elm tree and the words "Norman's Camp" were burned into the trunk, likely in jest of their young supervisor. The railroad was completed in the spring of 1887 and the first passenger trains began rolling through central Oklahoma a few months later.

Railway officials assigned the name, Norman, to the stop and later said they based the name on what was burned in the tree by the survey crew. Norman left the survey crew in 1873 and returned to his home in Kentucky where he eventually operated a wholesale lumber business until his death in 1922.

County: Cleveland Record Address:: Lindsey and Classen southwest corner Norman, Oklahoma USA 73071 Web site if available: [Web Link] Rate the Site: Date Erected: 3/2/2022 Sponsor (Who put it there): Historical Signage project

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