MUSKOGEE (mils-ko'ge), a city of eastern Oklahoma, U.S.A., 130 m. E.N.E. of Oklahoma City, near the confluence of the Verdigris, the Grand, and the Arkansas rivers; county seat of Muskogee county. It is on Federal highways 64 and 73 ; has a well equipped airport (Hat. Box Field) controlled by the United States Air Service; and is served by the Frisco, the Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf, the Midland Valley, and the Missouri-Kan sas-Texas railways. Pop. (192o) 30.277 ( 73% native white and 24% negroes), in 1930, 32,026, an increase of 5.8%. It is the seat of United States Veterans Bureau Hospital 90 and the Oklahoma School for the Blind, headquarters of the Indian Agency for the Five Civilized Tribes, and the home of the Oklahoma Free State Fair. At Bacone, 2 m. N.E., is Indian University (Baptist; 1884). Muskogee is the metropolis of a rich agricultural and oil-pro ducing territory. It has large railway shops, yards, and offices;
wholesale and jobbing houses; oil refineries, cotton gins and compresses, cottonseed-oil mills, etc. The factory output in 1927 was valued at $11,378,456. Bank debits to individual accounts aggregated $145,441,000 in 1926. The assessed valuation of prop erty for 1927 was $29,999,656. Muskogee was founded about 1870, and became the chief town of the Creek Nation and the administrative centre of the former Indian Territory. The first railway (the "Katy") reached it in 1872. In 1893 the Dawes Commission began to transform the tribal allotments into indi vidual holdings. The city was chartered in 1898, and in 1900 it had a population of 4,154. By 1910 the population was 25,278, a sixfold increase in the decade. The managerial form of govern ment was adopted in 1920.