Bright Child, Bright Town
A town of four that doubles as a ranch survives 60 years after incorporation
Caitlin Thomas, Sam Page, Mackenzie Kifer, Jared Rotha
In 1999, an ad company made this sign for Lotsee, Oklahoma for a Chevrolet Suburban ad. At the time Lotsee's population was nine, but the central Oklahoman town now has an official population of two. Unofficially, the town's population has doubled since the 2010 census.
Lotsee Spradling remembers the day she learned her father had named a town after her.
“I’d done all my homework and I was sitting on [my horse] in the yard, laid back, about half asleep, and I see this car coming, and I’m like… ‘What in the world is that?’” Spradling said. “So the guy gets here and he wants to talk to someone about the town of Lotsee.”
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Today, Spradling is one of only four people who call Lotsee, Oklahoma (pronounced LOH-tsee -- it is a Comanche word that means ‘bright child’) ‘home,’ making it one of Oklahoma’s smallest towns. The other three are Spradling’s husband, Mike, her daughter Michelle and her granddaughter. That’s up 100% from the 2010 census.
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The Spradling's 2,000 acre ranch, the Flying G, is also the town of Lotsee, OK.
Lotsee Spradling grew up in another house across the ranch. This one was built after she married, and is closer to the road.
Lotsee Spradling, the woman after whom the town is named, grew up in this house on the other end of the property. She was in the yard here when she learned she had a town named after her.
The Spradling's 2,000 acre ranch, the Flying G, is also the town of Lotsee, OK.
But as few as 60 years ago, Lotsee wasn’t even a town. It was just 2,000 acre piece of land between Mannford and Sand Springs where a man named George Campbell was raising his family and running a ranch. When the Keystone Dam was nearing completion in 1963, Tulsa and Sand Springs starting talking about annexing the land, and Campbell worried that he would lose the freedom to use his land the way he pleased if that happened.
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“Back in that day scouting was huge,” Spradling said. “We’d have three or four troops camping out here almost every weekend year-round. Churches would come out and have picnics, things like that, so. And if you get incorporated into a town you don’t get to do all those things legally. You have to have permits, and you can’t have a campfire, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.”
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To stop that from happening, Campbell, a lawyer who practiced in Sand Springs, decided to turn the Flying G Ranch into its own town.
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This is Lotsee Spradling, town clerk of the town her father named after her in 1963.
Once a day, Spradling drives around the ranch to check fences and check on the cows.
This is Lotsee Spradling, town clerk of the town her father named after her in 1963.
Oklahoma law allows for a group of people living “in compact form” to petition the Board of County Commissioners to incorporate – become a town.
Stillwater Attorney Travis Cagle said there’s no minimum number of people who have to live in the area, but a person does have to go through the incorporation process.
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“That incorporation process requires you to file with the board of county commissioners in the county where the town is going to be located,” Cagle said. “You have to provide notice to the people that are going to be in the town and then at least … a third of the people that are going to be in the town have to vote for the new town in order for the board of county commissioners to hear the petition for incorporation of a new town.”
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Campbell was concerned about Tulsa or Sand Springs intervening, Spradling said, so he didn’t even tell his wife about the petition.
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“Nobody knew,” Spradling said. “They kept it extremely secret. It was my dad and a lawyer friend of his – My dad was a lawyer, too – that incorporated the town, but they didn’t tell anyone ‘cause if word had gotten out, then the two cities would have protested us getting a town charter. So nobody knew but those two guys.”
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At the time, Lotsee’s population stood at a whopping nine people, but it has declined over the years, at one point dropping as low as two when Lotsee’s daughter Arron Naugle moved out and bought the property next door. Now, unless you count the animals, which would bring the population up to around 300, Lotsee has a population of four. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 estimate still lists the population as two.
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As a town, Lotsee’s responsibilities are limited. They are required to hold regular town meetings; Spradling said they last about three minutes.
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“We just have to have periodic meetings and basically, we talk about the weather and what everybody is doing, you know. We don’t do much,” Spradling said.
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Lotsee is legally entitled to a portion of property taxes collected by the county, but Spradling turns it down every year.
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“We don’t accept any of that money,” Spradling said. “I have to sign a form every year and send it in saying we don’t want it.”
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Instead, Lotsee runs off revenue from cattle, horse riding lessons and a pecan shop where they sell pecans grown in their orchard. It is, when it comes down to it, a working ranch.
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As a ranch, it attracts people who live outside the town, like Megan Sell. Sell is an Oklahoma State University student who drives an hour to work in the pecan shop.
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She said she was sucked in after taking riding lessons on the ranch.
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“I’d go up to the barn and help feed the horses and then, you know, got introduced to Lotsee, and Lotsee would always have a group of kids come around on the weekends and summers to feed cows,” Sell said. “And I would spend like three weeks out here in the summers, living in the attic, just playing with the cows and stuff.”
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For Sell, the ranch provides a much-needed outlet for her love for animals. The fact that it is its own town is a fun fact that doesn’t affect the day-to-day.
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“Yeah, it’s kind of weird,” Sell said. “‘Cause when you tell people, ‘I work in Lotsee for Lotsee’ and they’re like, ‘Where’s Lotsee?’ And I’m like, ‘oh, it’s this neat little town ranch and my boss’s name is Lotsee,’ and they’re like, ‘That’s weird.’ You know, it’s kind of a fun thing to tell people."
Megan Sell goes to school at Oklahoma State University and helps out on the Flying G Ranch, sometimes helping vaccinate the cattle.
Sells works in the pecan shop on the ranch, which sells thousands of pounds of pecans every year.
Megan Sell goes to school at Oklahoma State University and helps out on the Flying G Ranch, sometimes helping vaccinate the cattle.
For Spradling’s daughters, the fact that the Flying G Ranch is also a town named after their mother is little more than an interesting fact. Arron Naugle, who lives on a piece of property adjacent to the ranch and is serving as the appointed mayor of Lotsee, doesn’t worry too much about the implications of township. When asked why they don’t take the tax revenue offered by the county, she referred back to Spradling rather than answer the question.
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She said she doesn’t have many duties as mayor.
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“Oh, there’s some paperwork and stuff, but there’s not a whole lot,” Naugle said. “Paperwork and posting the meetings and stuff.”
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Naugle said sometimes she even forgets Lotsee is it’s own town; but when she remembers, she likes it.
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“I definitely like it because it is unique and different but it’s nothing that gets talked about on a daily basis or it’s not like you go anywhere and people go, ‘that's the mayor of Lotsee,’” Naugle said. “You know, it's so little that nobody even knows and it's nothing that we push or promote. And it is kinda cool. You'll hear a lot of people, especially with my mom, they’re like 'I’ve never known anybody that a town was named after them.'”
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As long as the town keeps up with its meetings, it’s in no danger of losing it’s township, Spradling said. And with Spradling’s 8-year-old granddaughter now living on the ranch, the future looks bright for Lotsee, Oklahoma.