The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

27 November 2005

On the outside looking in

John Sutter has a piece in this morning's Oklahoman which looks at the nine incorporated communities which exist as holes within Oklahoma City limits.

One issue for them is trying to retain an identity when their mail goes to somewhere else: only Bethany and Mustang have their own post offices. Still, if you key a Warr Acres or Nichols Hills address into the USPS's database, you'll get the correct town. (This didn't work with any Village or Valley Brook addresses I tried, all of which came back designated as Oklahoma City; I wrote about this phenomenon here.)

Sutter says that for these municipalities, existing as an enclave is "a challenge at best," which is no doubt true. However, the worst-case scenario — a "death sentence" — seems a bit far-fetched. He cites the case of the one-time town of Britton, incorporated well before the days of statehood and absorbed into Oklahoma City in 1950. This much is indisputable:

At one time, Britton had a bustling downtown scene centered on the intersection at Britton Road and Western Avenue, now in northwest Oklahoma City. The area struggles with high crime and failing businesses.

I suspect this is due more to changing demographics than to the changing of the guard. In retrospect, I think it might have been better for The Village, which was founded in 1950, and Britton to merge, but this wasn't in the cards: for one thing, Floyd Harrison, a central figure in the incorporation of The Village and the developer of Casady Square, didn't want competition for his shopping center from downtown Britton.

Then there's the case of Valley Brook, a quarter-section on the south side with a checkered reputation (speed traps, "gentlemen's" clubs) and presumably not much in the way of prospects: there apparently hasn't been a building permit issued there in a decade. Valley Brook doesn't have the money, the beauty, or the selectivity of Lake Aluma, an enclave in the northeast quadrant, but I suspect it has basically the same attitude: "Leave us alone." And I think it's safe to say that there's some of that at the heart of all of these communities, and the smattering of unincorporated areas that still exist on the city's fringe: they may not always be sure what they want, but they definitely don't want to be just another part of the city.

Posted at 12:29 PM to City Scene


At least with Warr Acres and Nichols Hills (and not showing up as such), they are small towns with a large city surrounding them. The city in which I grew up, Coral Springs, has a population of about 130,000 people. Yet Yahoo and Google (not to mention Florida Power and Light and BellSouth) still list residences there as "Pompano Beach" addresses. Pompano Beach is undoubtedly older (by 40 years at least), but its population is about 40% smaller than Coral Springs, and has been smaller since the mid 1980's, Further, it doesn't even share a boundary with Coral Springs. And at 23.5 square miles, Coral Springs is not some little enclave.

Posted by: timekeeper at 5:42 PM on 28 November 2005

Very strange that they should do that.

At least some of the city seems to be properly designated: I tried three addresses (one for City Hall, one for the Marriott on Heron Bay Blvd., one for the Center for the Arts) on the USPS ZIP finder, and all of them came up correctly. But if I send 33065 to city-data.com, it comes back as Ramblewood East, and 33076 (where the Marriott is) is listed as Pompano Beach. So apparently Coral Springs doesn't have its own post office at all, and it's at the mercy of whichever USPS branch is designated for that part of town.

Posted by: CGHill at 6:26 PM on 28 November 2005

Hmmm. Ramblewood East was an unincorporated slice of land (a condo development that didn't want to pay the city's low taxes) that was forcibly incorporated into the city last year (since the county has decided that every square inch of developed or developable land will be part of some city or another). As for Post Offices, there are two of them (the main branch has an inordinate number of post office boxes at zip code 33075, in addition to the service for 33065) and another one in the southern part of the city (33071), which is located in the subdivision of Ramblewood (not to be confused with Ramblewood East, which is west of, and considerably north of, Ramblewood itself). There are two other zip codes in the city (33067 and 33076), but the post offices for those zip codes are in neighboring communities. (33067 is Parkland, for example, but encompasses portions of northern Coral Springs as well.)

Posted by: timekeeper at 5:47 PM on 29 November 2005