Eschiti
A ghost town in Eschiti, Oklahoma, Eschiti is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Ghost town in Eschiti; research record. HauntHunt files it with ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip. It is the sort of entry the archive keeps because the ground and the telling both survive.
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Is Eschiti haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
Eschiti was the government entry in one of Oklahoma's last townsite fights. When the Big Pasture opened by sealed bid in December 1906, the Interior Department platted and sold a townsite in 1907 advertising it as the 'Princess of the Pasture' — named for Eschiti, a Comanche chief — and a post office followed on October 31. The town drew about 1,200 people on the assumption that a federal townsite meant a railroad.
The railroad had other plans. Wichita Falls promoters Frank Kell and Joe Kemp ran the Wichita Falls and Northwestern into Oklahoma and bypassed Eschiti by two miles to serve their own paper town, Kell City. The feud that followed had everything: rival newspapers denouncing each other, Eschiti holding the post office while Kell City held the rails — and one 1908 night when parties unknown loaded Eschiti's little frame post office, clerk asleep inside, onto wagons and rolled it to Kell City. Deputy marshals had it back the next night.
The winner took a new name
The federal government settled it. The railroad paid $2,340.75 in damages, altered its survey to serve the government townsite — and Eschiti, suddenly the survivor, changed its name to Grandfield on January 21, 1909. Kell City vanished from timetables within the year.
Nothing remains but Eschiti Cemetery, on private land a half-mile from the Grandfield Memorial Cemetery — the only piece of the Princess of the Pasture still bearing her original name. The file is history only, no haunting attached.
Documented history
Railway routing favored nearby Kell City; Grandfield absorbed both by 1909. A ghost town's file is unusual: the emptiness itself is documented, and this entry is part of that record. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'Ghost Towns'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.
Verified historyOklahoma Historical Society
Sources on file
- 01Ghost TownsOklahoma Historical Society · historical society · A2
Field notes & open questions
Oklahoma Historical Society identifies a historic ghost town; exact footprint and surviving structures require individual-source verification. Present-day namesakes or successor settlements must not be conflated.