History

The Founding of Coldwater

Coldwater began as the dream of a group of men from Harper County who wanted to establish a centrally located county-seat town in Comanche County. In 1921, founder C. M. Cade recounted the town’s beginnings in the Western Star:

In the spring of 1884, George Vickers, Tim Shields, J. Paul Grove, Sam Sisson and I assembled in Sisson’s office. We decided to travel by way of Kiowa to a point near the east-west center of Comanche County, locate a survey corner and establish a town near the county’s center. Our party carried a little food, a shotgun for hunting, medicine for snake bites and surveying equipment. Mr. Vickers was a civil engineer.

After reaching Kiowa, we passed through Nescatunga, a new town founded by people from Medicine Lodge who hoped it would become the county seat. Cattle and cattlemen had destroyed nearly all the government survey markers, although we occasionally found township lines. We therefore traveled south to the Kansas state line adjoining the Cherokee Strip in Indian Territory. Vickers served as surveyor while the rest of us worked as chain carriers and flagmen.

We began surveying north. After working half a day, eating lunch and returning to work, the chain carriers decided the rattlesnake danger justified taking some of the snake-bite medicine. They continued taking a little more whenever they stopped to change survey pins.

At about three o’clock, the tired chain carriers took a nap. When they awoke, they disagreed about whether they had measured forty-eight or fifty-eight chains, so they split the difference. By the time they reached what they believed was the center of Comanche County, they had missed it by a mile and a half. They traveled east, learned of a township corner, stayed overnight and then surveyed from that corner to the present townsite.

At the township corner, located on school land, we met C. C. Tincher, a member of the Nescatunga Township Company. After sharing a meal and some of the snake medicine with us, he left his Nescatunga associates and joined our townsite company. We surveyed the Coldwater area and found C. D. Bickford camped below us on Cavalry Creek, where we had gone for water. He was also considering establishing a townsite.

Bickford was from Coldwater, Michigan. He offered to abandon his townsite project if we allowed him to name the new town. That is how Coldwater received its name. We left the surrounding land for settlers and took one section for the townsite.