In the past 150 years as many as two thousand Oklahoma hamlets, villages, towns, and even cities have bloomed and then died. Some have faded away, with not even a fallen chimney to mark their location. Others have left ghostly marks of their past--mounds of rubble grown over with grass or crumbling walls of buildings. A few still cling tenaciously to life, with a few inhibitants left to call them home.

In these pages John W. Morris tells about 130 of the towns. He describes how and why each was established, the activities of its people in its heyday, and the conditions that cuased it to...