Pine Ridge, Oklahoma


Pine Ridge is an unincorporated community in Hale Township, Caddo County, Oklahoma, United States. It is located south of Fort Cobb at the junction of County Road 1380 and County Street 2550.

History

According to locals, the community got its name from the community of Pine Ridge, Arkansas, that was the setting of the radio show Lum and Abner which aired from 1934 to 1952. Legend says that the owner of the grocery store named it "Pine Ridge" after the radio show and over time the name was adopted as the name of the whole community.
During the community's heyday in the 1940s there was a hub of activity at the main junction of the Ozark Trail and the Fort Cobb road, with a grocery store and two churches, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church and Pine Ridge Church of Christ was completed at Pine Ridge, with more than 90 GE-powered wind turbines operating in the Pine Ridge area. Much of the electricity generated by the facility is being purchased by McDonald's, Hormel and OshKosh. According to the power generating company, the site will "avoid more than 697,048 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions that would have been produced if the electricity had been generated using fossil fuels - the equivalent of taking 149,261 cars off the road for a year." According to another source, the site creates enough electricity to power 110,000 households.

Present

Pine Ridge is located at the junction of the blacktop road going directly south from Fort Cobb and the old Ozark Trail.
The Pine Ridge community mostly consists of land dedicated to wheat and hay farming and cattle ranching, as well as the Pine Ridge solar generation facility. There was also a winery east of Pine Ridge on the Ozark Trail until its closing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Public school students in Pine Ridge attended school at Broxton until the school district was consolidated with Fort Cobb in the 1990s. Telephone numbers for the Pine Ridge area are split between the Fort Cobb and Apache prefixes. Electric service is provided by CK Energy Electric Cooperative.
Pine Ridge is in State House District 56 and in State Senate District 26.