Does Newalla, Oklahoma Really Exist?
Among my many strange hobbies, I spend a great deal of time studying maps. As a resident of the central Oklahoma area, I have heard people for years tell me they live in Newalla, Oklahoma. For years I have done pretty much what everyone else does and accepted that. They would tell me they lived East of Tinker AFB and South of I-40. As a person that studies maps, I have been spending some time on Google Maps, drawing out the borders of most of the Oklahoma City metro city boundaries. As I started on the East side, I noticed that as much search, I cannot find a good map of the boundaries of Newalla. Over time I started to ask the address of friends that claim to live in Newalla and found that they were actually in the city limits of Oklahoma City.
If you review the Oklahoma City ward map you can see that Oklahoma City limits covers a vast area. Even the Wikipedia article on Newalla has misleading information. Wikipedia refers to Newalla as an unincorporated community in Eastern Oklahoma County located West of US Highway 270 and North of I-40. The are that it is describing is Oklahoma City. I have read that in the 1960’s Oklahoma City annexed hundreds of square miles making it the third largest city in the United States in land area. I am not sure but have a theory that Newalla, though unincorporated was once its own community before Oklahoma City annexed the area in the 1960’s. It is my opinion that the locals hold on to the Newalla identity though they actually live in Oklahoma City.
There seems to be this trend on the East side where people claim to live in Newalla, or Choctaw when they are actually in the city of Oklahoma City. Choctaw’s southern border ends at SE 44th Street though you will find people that live at Choctaw Road and SE 89th that will claim to be in Choctaw. This area is actually Oklahoma City. I have been looking at homes in an area that people call Choctaw at I-40 and Choctaw Road and when I was there I noticed they had garbage dumpsters that said “The City of Oklahoma City” on them. This matches with what the OKC ward map says. I know this may seem to be trivial to most people but I have lived here for 34 of my 44 years and there are people the do not even know what city they live in. If anything, it just surprises me.
I saw your blog entry while looking for information on Newalla. While Newalla is an unincorporated community, it does have its own post office and zip code. A person living in Newalla’s zip code would have mail addressed to Newalla, not Oklahoma City.
While that may be true, the person will still live in Oklahoma City
regardless of what the post office is called. In fact, the Post Office has
no connection to any city and can be named anything. If you read this entry
in Wikipedia under the heading “Zip Codes and Previous Zoning lines you can
see that a zip code and city limits are two different things…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_code
“A ZIP code’s address and the city name written on the same line do not
necessarily mean that address is within that city.”
The reality is that there is no city, township, or any sort of municipal
entity that exists under the name Newalla, Oklahoma. There is another
excerpt from this same article referring to a similar situation in Phoenix,
Arizona…
“For example, approximately 85% of the area served by the ZIP code 85254, to
which the place name Scottsdale, Arizona, is assigned, is actually inside
the city limits of neighboring
Phoenix.
This is because the Scottsdale post office serves this area. So some
residents of the ZIP code mistakenly believe they live in Scottsdale when
they actually live in Phoenix.”
I just thought it was interesting enough that virtually no one that I know
that claims to live in Newalla, knows this. Thanks for the post.