Porter is a pretty little town, and stands in its grandeur of being the solid place between Muskogee and Coweta where football fills Friday nights with cheers and grit and fun, where Saturdays are meant to be a work day like no other, and Sundays bring the worship and unity to the town, with churches made for many.
In the middle of July, the 1890's came together with forests, planted across this railway stop, with acres and acres of peach trees, building it up to the Peach Capitol of Oklahoma. The crop was planted to service the local community, but brought up the entire state and beyond. The richest farm land between the Verdigris and Arkansas Rivers were planted and those farmers families who still grow, gather and sell peaches to their fullness.
Looking west there are two water towers, one new, clean and brightly painted with starkly white paint on the right, and the old one, still looking stately, it's shoulders heavy with the steel of the tank, its legs as supple as the day they were installed back in the early twenties, with rivets banged and hammered every four inches from the bottom to the top, it rests. It is lighter now. A closer look reveals the name of the town that is painted on its rusty finish. The days of water pumped to the top have moved over to the new one, but very few want to see the old one removed.
Pleasant Porter. It's meanings are simple. The man was"the greatest" Chief of the Creek Nation, born in 1840 and died in 1906 before Oklahoma became a state, and had the town named for him out of respect.
The other meaning, more simple, is that it has been a pleasant place to live for about the past hundred and twenty years.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Porter, Oklahoma
7 miles west of Hwy 69
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