08/08/2025
Wow!! We are so honored, humbled and excited to have this happen! It tells our story before we even knew it was ours.
Come by and see it…it’s right up next to our NE property line on City of Norman property.
A huge ‘thank you’ to Andy Reiger and the City of Notman staff members that helped on this project.
You all are helping make Norman a better place!
Posted yesterday on various pages…
Norman's New Historical Marker!
Located at the corner of Webster & Tonhawa near The Montford Inn
Here's the text:
Montford Johnson, Chickasaw Rancher
Montford Johnson, the Chickasaw rancher who Norman’s Montford Inn is named for, traversed the state in the years before Oklahoma’s 1907 statehood. As a post Civil War entrepreneur, he bought and sold cattle, and negotiated with the Indian tribes where he was respected and trusted.
Johnson’s ranch brands were well known and revered in Indian Territory. His travels and cattle drives took him through what later became Cleveland County and the Townsite of Norman.
Montford Johnson was born in Indian Territory in 1843. His father, known as “Boggy Johnson” was an Englishman. He met Montford’s mother while running an Indian trading post in Mississippi.
Together they were among the Chickasaws forcibly removed from their lands to Indian Territory. Montford’s mother died a few years after he was born and his father moved to New York and left Montford and his older sister, Adelaide to be raised by their grandmother.
As a young man, Montford became head of the household, built ranches and cabins for his family and others. He was trusted by the Indians because he only employed Indians and African Americans on his ranches.
In the early 1870s, Montford met and befriended Abner Norman, the young Kentucky man hired by the government to survey land west of the Indian Meridian. The survey crew had stayed near Camp Arbuckle in southern Oklahoma and were directed to the dugout camp and spring where Montford and his son, E.B. Johnson, had employed ranch hands. When the railroad crews came through in 1880 working out the right-of-way, they also were directed to the camp near what is now the intersection of Classen Boulevard and Lindsey Street.
Years earlier the survey crew had burned “Norman’s Camp” in an Elm tree. That became the name for the new town and railroad depot.
Earlier Montford was driving cattle up the Shawnee trail and turned west toward what became Norman. He saw an Indian lookout on a hill overlooking the South Canadian River. He pushed his herd towards the hill which historians believe was on what is now Robinson Street near the water tower and Fire Station.
Johnson reports seeing an enormous Indian camp in the area now known as the Ten Mile Flats. He estimated nearly 5,000 Comanches. They were on a buffalo hunt and needed a place to rest and run horse races. He reported buffalo-skin teepees were scattered along the banks of a small creek.
Montford’s son E.B. Johnson and his cowhands reported stopping at the railroad section house in Norman for a delicious, home-made 50 cent meal. E.B. and Mollie Johnson would later move their family to Norman in 1898 and lived here for the rest of his life. His four sons, Neil, Hap, Graham and Eddie played football for the Sooners. Montford Johnson, who died in 1896, was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 2020.
