Old Katy Pond

Building the Katy Pond was Muskogee's first civic project. The near light pole marks the deep end of the old lake.

Maj. John A. Foreman called a meeting of area residents to consider building the pond. A. J. Coleman tells about the effort of Maj. Foreman in a 1923 Oklahoma City interview. Coleman said construction of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad tracks south from Kansas had not yet reached present-day Muskogee. There was some discussion of locating the town east of its current location. This discussion of where to lay tracks was going on despite the railroad survey crew having already marked the way.

Maj. Foreman wanted the tracks to follow the earlier right-of-way and not change to another location. To promote the new station's location, he supported building the pond as an inducement. Coleman suggests that the iterant residents were largely uninterested in helping dig the pond and build a dam. Unfortunately, Coleman does not say how the pond was built. However, its construction ensured that railroad engines could obtain water in the location soon called Muskogee.

Foreman selected a low area for the construction of the pond. The pond backed up roughly from North Fourth Street to east of North Main Street. At an early date, Main Street ended at the south side of the pond because the pond extended almost to the railroad tracks. This put the pond's eastern end just behind the MKT railroad roundhouse.

On the western end of the pond, F. B. Severs built his cotton gin. A one-inch water line stretched from the gin down to the pond. It fed Severs' steam engine used both to remove the seeds and to compress the cotton into bales.

Commercial Street served as the southern boundary of the pond. This street used to run east and west just north of the Arrowhead Mall building.

According to a 1904 map, the pond stretched north to Lake Street. The dam forming the pond ran under Lake Street. It ran parallel to Fondulac Street one block south. The parking lot "road" on the northeast side of the mall partially follows the old Lake Street path.

Fondulac Street also received its name from the Katy Pond. "Lac" is the French word for "lake." Today the street is known as Martin Luther King Street.

Walter P. Johnson came to Muskogee in 1882 as an employee of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad. He recalled that the pond already existed by that date. Actually, it was already nearly a decade old. By February of 1884, fencing along Main Street reached all the way to the Katy Pond's edge. In the next decade, buildings began to crowd the pond.

After 1900 Jim Swift and Beverly Berry, a Kansan and an Englishman respectively, built a small wooden boat. It had a small steam engine for power. A boy could take a date for a ride around the pond for twenty-five cents. This enterprise set the stage for the later construction of another pond for public amusement on the west side of town.

Fishing was a pleasant pastime on the Katy Pond. One African American sold a pole, hook and line to an out-of-towner. The town visitor stayed longer in town than he planned in order to spend the afternoon fishing. Anglers caught perch and catfish when they were lucky.

The Katy Pond was a natural swimming hole. Youngsters regularly swam there in the summer. The shallowness of the pond also meant it was convenient for ice-skating. Accounts of ice-skating during the hard winter of 1884 surely refer to skating on the Katy Pond.

By 1907, the pond is gone. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad built the new Katy freight house at the eastern end of the pond. Nearby, the Nichols Wire Company built their wholesale house. A dozen railroad tracks chris-cross the pond's area within a half decade.

The construction of Arrowhead Mall obliterated Commercial and Lake Streets. The south edge of the Office Depot parking lot is where Lake Street ran. The land contouring covered the last vestige of the dam. However, if you stand near the east end of Sears looking slightly east of north to the intersection of Martin Luther King and Main, you can imagine the light shimmering off the surface of the Katy Pond.