BURNEYVILLE, OKLAHOMA
As of 2007, the 73430 Zip Code for the Burneyville, Oklahoma
post office served a population of 1,029. 1
More than fifty percent of the residents live two miles (3 km)
west of the post office at Falconhead Resort & Country Club.2
Originally known as Turner’s Lodge, it made golf history in the
1950’s and 1960’s as the smallest site ever to host both of golf’s
professional tours, the LPGA for women and the PGA for men.3
Now semi-private, the course today represents the only venue
accessible to the average golfer to have been played by the
outstanding professionals of their day. Among them were LPGA Hall
of Famers Patty Berg, Betty Jameson, Betsy Rawls, Louise Suggs,
Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright, and Babe Zaharias; and men’s majors
winners Jack Nicklaus, Raymond Floyd, Tommy Aaron, Charles Coody,
Bob Goalby, Gay Brewer, Jr., Don January, Peter Thomson, Tony Lema,
Kel Nagle, Jack Fleck, Al Geiberger, Byron Nelson, and Bobby
Nichols.4 Oklahoma’s great U.S. Amateur champions Susie Maxwell
Berning, Charles Coe, and Labron Harris, Jr., were frequent playing
guests of the Turners at what was their private hunting, fishing,
and golfing retreat.5
Some years, the “Opie Turner Open” and the “Waco Turner Open”
paid more in prize money than any other tour stops.6 A total of 13
professional events were contested at Turner’s Lodge from
1958-1965.7 The layout underwent a redesign by golf course
architect Robert Trent Jones, Sr., and a name-change to Falconhead
Resort & Country Club, in 1970.8 Public access to the course
may be made by calling the golf shop, 580-276-9284. Lots, homes,
condominiums, and townhouses may be toured by calling the
administrative office, 580-276-3341.
Three miles southeast of the Burneyville post office,
agricultural research takes place at a demonstration farm of the
renowned Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, one of the top 50
grantmaking philanthropies in the United States.9
Southern Oklahoma oil millionaires, and lifelong friends, Waco
Turner and Lloyd Noble created Turner’s Lodge and the Noble
Foundation, respectively.
The Red River Research and Demonstration Farm is part of a
distinguished operations division of the foundation, which brings
scientists from around the world to southern Oklahoma to engage in
plant biology, forage improvement, and agriculture research.
Currently, the Noble Foundation is collaborating with the
University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University in studying
switch grass as an alternative to carbon fuels. Their initiative,
known as the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center, was established by the
Oklahoma Legislature in 2008. 10
Turner School, the pre-Kindergarten through grade 12 public school
one-half mile west of Falconhead Resort & Country Club, is
named in honor of Waco Turner. The gymnasium was named for his
wife, Opie James Turner.
Before striking it rich in the oil fields of southern Oklahoma
and east Texas in the 1920’s, the couple had taught school at
Burneyville. They donated the land for the consolidated Turner
School, which combined the students of the former Burneyville,
Courtney, Meadowbrook, and Dunbar schools.
Turner School and Falconhead Resort & Country Club (formerly
the private Turner’s Lodge), celebrate their 50th anniversaries in
August 2008.11
The Burneyville postal area is located in western Love County.
The county is bounded by Carter County on the north and the Red
River, the border between Oklahoma and Texas, on the south.12
Interstate 35 and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad bisect
central Love County from north to south, connecting the two states.
Additional access across the Red River from Texas is provided by
the Taovayas Indian Bridge on Oklahoma highway 89 south of
Courtney. State Highway 32 crosses Love County from west to
east.13
The 73430 Zip Code covers 93 square miles
(240 km2) of mostly farms and ranches in the lush
bottom lands of the Red River. 14 Growers specialize in peanuts,
pecans, watermelons, grains, hay, and cattle. Oil leases dot the
area, and horse trainers also have operations. Love County has been
called “the shopping mall of the world for quarter horses” in
reference to its abundance of top equine stock and training
specialists in reining, cutting, roping, pleasure, and barrel
racing events. The county is midway on Interstate 35 between
Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, the sites of the major quarter horse
competitions in the United States. 15
Burneyville and Love County were named for prominent Chickasaw
Indians who settled in the area in the early 1840’s as part of the
Federal removal of the tribe from northern Mississippi to Indian
Territory.16
The Burneyville post office opened on May 5, 1879.17 It is the
oldest, continuous postal service in Love County.18 Marietta, the
eventual county seat, was established with the coming of the
railroad in 1887.19
The small rural communities of Jimtown, Batson, Turner, and
Burneyville are located within the 73430 Zip Code.
For many years, Burneyville proper has consisted only of the
post office, a Baptist church, two cemeteries, and 12 houses.20 But
in its heyday through the first half of the 20th century, the
pretty townsite three miles (5 km) north of the Red River included
a hotel, grocery, general merchandise store, blacksmith, druggist,
and two doctors.21
Early History of Burneyville The Burney family settled
Burneyville, one of the oldest towns in Love County, OK, in
1844.22
The Burneys (David C. and his wife, Lucy James) were prominent
Chickasaw Indians who relocated to what was then Pickens County,
Indian Territory, from northern Mississippi and established a farm
on the site of the future town.23
The émigrés traveled to Indian Territory by steamboat up the Red
River. They paused at Shreveport, Louisiana, on January 15, 1844,
for the birth of a son. The family named him for the boat’s
captain, Benjamin Crooks.24
Though the parents did not live to see it happen, both that son,
Benjamin Crooks Burney, and a future son-in-law, Benjamin F.
Overton, would be elected governors of the Chickasaw Nation in the
late 1870’s and early 1880’s. The mother, Lucy, died in 1845, and
the father, David, died shortly after the Civil War.25
Prior to his death, the Chickasaw Nation honored David C. Burney
in the naming of a girls’ school. The Burney Academy opened in
1859. A post office was located there from July 3, 1860, to June
22, 1866, although it was probably not in continuous operation
because of the Civil War. The site of the academy was 2 miles
(3.2 km) southeast of Lebanon in what is now Marshall
County.26
Burney was honored posthumously when the Burneyville post office
opened on the site of the family farm on May 5, 1879. The post
office is the oldest in Love County that is still in use. The first
postmaster was James C. Nall.27
The location of the town of Burneyville has never changed. It is
situated nine miles (14 km) west of Marietta, the county seat, and
two and one-half miles southwest. It is approximately three miles
north of the Red River. Walnut Creek Bayou passes to the north. The
Burney Ferry, south of the Burney farm was the main business and
travel route before the Santa Fe railroad completed its north-south
link between Indian Territory and Texas in 1887.28
With the merger of Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory at
statehood in 1907, the county of Love was carved from part of the
former Pickens County. The county was named for Overton Love, an
esteemed judge of the Chickasaw Nation court who had arrived in
Indian Territory in 1843, one year prior to the Burney
family.29
Driving Directions to Burneyville Post Office From Interstate
35, Take Exit 15 (Marietta Exit); Go west on State Highway 32 for
9 miles (14 km); Go southwest on State Highway 96 for
2.5 miles (4.0 km).
Driving Directions to Falconhead Resort & Country Club From
Interstate 35, Take Exit 15 (Marietta Exit); Go west on State
Highway 32 for 11 Miles. Falconhead, a gated community, is on the
left.
Footnotes 1 – “73430,” www.bestplaces.net. 2 – Burneyville
postmaster records, May 16, 2008. 3 – Barbara W. Sessions: “Golf’s
Giveaway Man,” Oklahoma Living, September 1998, p. 18. 4 – Barbara
W. Sessions: “Falconhead Course Makes List of Oklahoma’s Greatest
Sporting Events,” Marietta Monitor, September 14, 2007, p. 18. 5 –
Del Lemon: “Burneyville,” Chapter 5, Story of Golf in Oklahoma
(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001). 6 – Sessions,
“Falconhead Course Makes List of Oklahoma’s Greatest Sporting
Events,” p. 18. 7 – “Guess Who is in Love?” Love County Chamber of
Commerce brochure, www.lovecountyokla.org.
8 – Lemon, p. 128. 9 – “Top 100 U.S. Foundations by Asset Size,”
www.foundationcenter.org, March 31, 2008. 10 – “Oklahoma Bioenergy
Center,” www.noble.org. 11 – Sessions, “Falconhead Course Makes
List of Oklahoma’s Greatest Sporting Events,” p. 18. 12 – “73430,”
www.bestplaces.net. 13 – “Guess Who is in Love?” Love County
Chamber of Commerce brochure, www.lovecountyokla.org. 14 – “73430,”
www.brainyzip.com. 15 – Barbara W. Sessions: “In Love County,
Quarter Horses Make Great Neeiiggh-bors,” Oklahoma Living, March
1998, p. 17. 16 – Laquitta Ladner, Love County Heritage Commission:
History of Love County, Vol. I, (Dallas, TX: NationalShareGraphics,
Inc., 1983), pp. 5 and 49. 17 – George H. Shirk: Oklahoma Place
Names, 2nd Edition (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press,
1965), p. 35. 18 – Ladner, p. 49. 19 – Ibid., and Shirk, p. 155. 20
– Ladner, p. 50. 21 – Ladner, p. 49. 22 – Ladner, p. 49. 23 – John
Bartlett Meserve: “Governor Benjamin Franklin Overton And Governor
Benjamin Crooks Burney,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 16, No. 2,
June, 1938, p. 226. 24 – Ibid. 25 – Ibid. 26 – Shirk, p. 35. 27 –
Ladner, p. 49. 28 – Ladner, p. 49. 29 – Ladner, p. 5.
References Burneyville Postmaster. Burneyville, OK 73430.
Ladner, Laquitta. Love County Heritage Commission. History of Love
County, Vol. I.,
(Dallas, Tx: NationalShareGraphics, Inc., 1983. ISBN: 0-88107-006-8).