Oklahoma’s ‘Ugliest’ Town Isn’t A Real Shocker To Residents

If you've spent any time traveling Oklahoma in the last ten to fifteen years, you already know that there's a sort of small-town renaissance going on in this part of America.

It all started years ago when traveling groups of mural artists swept through the state, offering their services in every small town they came upon. They would gather input and town history from the locals and paint marvelous art in downtown areas.

Soon after, slightly larger towns and big-city suburbs seized on the idea that revitalizing their dwindling downtown areas might make life there more attractive. Places like Owasso, Broken Arrow, Yukon, and Newcastle put massive efforts into giving their vintage and dying downtown areas a major facelift.

Now those areas of each town are somewhat hip and fashionable filled with locally owned businesses and trendy restaurants.

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Oddly enough, as the pandemic rewrote the rules of working and remote jobs became the new normal, Millennials and the older Zoomers started leaving the convenience of big urban cities in lieu of much cheaper living costs in small towns all over Oklahoma.

You'd honestly be surprised how much business some of the region's biggest companies do out of small towns like Marlow, Hollis, Corn, Fairview, Velma, Poteau, Newkirk, and other nowhere destinations. It's been a great thing for these communities.

That being said, some old-school smaller towns are being held back by a never-evolving local government full of entrenched bureaucrats and a stale cast of elected officials.

Even as we've voted for proposals to beautify our own city time and time again and have quite possibly the best views of Oklahoma's prettiest sights, Lawton remains at the top of the list once again--voted the ugliest city in all of Oklahoma.

There is something deeply wrong with here and it's not hard to identify.

Sadly, Lawton's historic downtown was torn down to accommodate a big mall back in the late 70s. To be fair, they didn't tear down a vibrant and bustling downtown. It was run down and mostly vacant after a pretty extensive fire damaged a lot of the buildings.

Still, it'd be nice to see the downtown area get a makeover to resemble a classic traditional downtown. I mean, if Liberty National Bank turned its ridiculously ugly building into the gleaming example of class it is today, anybody can.

Lawton has made strides to try to beautify Lawton, at least under a previous bunch of elected officials... the Skid Row crack den that was 2nd Street used to look like this...

Now that stretch of road looks like this...

Gone are the run-down businesses, on that side of the street anyway. Instead of bodegas and dive bars, it's become pretty uptown with a Hilton and a bunch of discount dollar stores. As restaurants move in and retail bounces back, it'll continue to become a trendy area of Lawton as long as you don't look at the other side of the street.

The same can be said for Cache Road. Even if the work and transformations are super slow, every time they build a new business, we almost instantly forget what run-down hot mess used to be there before.

So does Lawton really deserve the title of the "Ugliest City" in Oklahoma?

Yeah. It's fair... at least for now.