Comanche County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Comanche County

Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge carries the only free-roaming Texas Longhorn cattle herd on federally-managed US public land — descendants of an 1894 federal-government rescue transfer when the breed had been pushed to near-extinction by post-Civil War commercial ranching's preference for Hereford and Angus stock. The herd today runs 300+ head and is managed under a USFWS breed-preservation MOU with the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America. The refuge also hosts a 650-head American bison herd (descendants of an original 1907 New York Zoological Society transfer of 15 animals — the first reintroduction of bison anywhere in their historic range), 700+ Rocky Mountain elk, and the only federally-protected eastern population of Rocky Mountain mule deer east of the Continental Divide per USFWS Wichita Mountains Comprehensive Conservation Plan.

Comanche County covers 1,069 sq mi at the southern edge of Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains uplift and includes Lawton (population 90,381, the county seat), Fort Sill (the US Army Field Artillery School and the largest active-duty installation in Oklahoma per DoD installation counts), and Cache. The Wichita Mountains themselves are a 525-million-year-old Cambrian granite-rhyolite uplift — among the oldest exposed crystalline rock in North America per USGS geologic mapping — eroded from an original Andean-scale range down to today's 600-2,464 ft above-grade summits (Mt. Scott at 2,464 ft is the highest auto-accessible peak, with a paved summit road that accepts rigs to 30 ft only). Doris Campground inside the refuge accepts rigs to 40 ft with electric hookups, 90 sites on the recreation.gov reservation system; the loop fills 4 months out for any October-November weekend (the autumn raptor migration through the Holy City of the Wichitas overlook is a major birding draw). Lake Lawtonka 8 miles north of Lawton is the alternative city-managed RV-friendly base with 200+ sites and full hookups.