Cotton, the Katy railroad and Route 66
Arcadia was settled soon after the 1889 Land Run by cotton farmers, white and African American, who came for the fertile land along the Deep Fork River and its creeks. A post office opened in 1890, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad line built through in 1902 and 1903 made the town a regional market. A June 1924 fire destroyed much of the business district, though Tuton’s Drugstore survived and is now on the National Register of Historic Places, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
U.S. Highway 66 brought travelers past town, and a stretch of the old roadbed was added to the National Register in 1999. The Arcadia Round Barn, built by William H. Odor in 1898 and saved by local volunteers, still stands at 107 E. Highway 66 and is listed on the National Register too. POPS joined it in 2007 with a 66-foot soda bottle out front. Arcadia fended off annexation by Edmond in the mid-1980s and incorporated in 1987.
A tiny town with older houses
Arcadia is small: about 170 people at the 2020 census, inside town limits of roughly a square mile and a half, about six miles east of Interstate 35 at Exit 141. Since 1968, its students have attended Oklahoma City public schools. Census Bureau estimates for a place this size carry wide margins of error, so read them as a rough picture, but they put the median year built near 1960. Houses that age can still have galvanized supply pipe, cast iron or clay drains, no outside cleanout, and plumbing added on over the decades by different hands. Pipes in a crawlspace or an outside wall are the first to freeze in a cold snap.
Edmond water and sewer, Arcadia lines
Inside town limits, the Arcadia Public Works Authority sends one monthly bill for water, sewer and trash, but the water comes from the City of Edmond under a partnership, and Edmond treats the town’s wastewater. Arcadia maintains the water lines from the supply point to your meter and the sewer mains from your tap to the treatment facility, and it tests the water monthly through DEQ. Everything on your side of the meter and the tap is yours to maintain. Natural gas comes from ONG and electricity from OG&E.
Edmond’s supply includes Arcadia Lake, the reservoir on the Deep Fork just east of Interstate 35 in eastern Edmond. The lake was a joint project of the City of Edmond and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, water supply and recreation, and it was created in 1984.
Wells and septic past the town limits
Step outside those small town limits and the farm ground and Deep Fork bottoms around Arcadia generally run on private wells and septic systems. Well water quality is up to the property owner. A certified lab test once a year, as the CDC advises, covers bacteria, nitrates, dissolved solids and pH, and the rock under central Oklahoma can add naturally occurring metals such as arsenic. Septic systems are regulated by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality: a soil test decides which system types a site can use, and an Authorization to Construct is required before a system is installed or modified. Our septic plumbing and pressure tank repair covers the plumbing side.
Permits and winter in Arcadia
Arcadia issues its own residential and commercial plumbing permits, along with building, electrical and HVAC permits, through the town building inspector at Town Hall, 217 N. Main Street. Winter is the season to plan for. Oklahoma City’s second-coldest reading on record, minus 14°F, came on February 16, 2021. In an older Arcadia house, a little insulation and a dripping faucet go a long way. When old galvanized pipe is past saving, our whole-house repiping service replaces it room by room.
