NARDIN—In the far northwest corner of Kay County six miles west of I-35 almost into Grant County on Oklahoma 11 lies the tiny unincorporated town of Nardin.
When the Cherokee Outlet opened for settlers to tame the Unassigned Lands in Indian Territory, eager crowds camped out in the border towns along the Kansas state line including the tail end of the railroad terminus at Hunnewell, Kan.
That summer of 1893, a trading post called Vilott was established 12 miles south of Hunnewell (which is virtually a ghost town now) and a mile north of what became the town of Nardin. Nearby was the 60-acre homestead of George F. Nardin.
With the arrival of the railroad in 1898, he sold a quarter section to allow for the building of a train depot and switch to haul wheat via rail at that location, which was platted and incorporated as the township of Nardin that year.
Nardin boasted a thousand residents by the 1920s. However, with the advent of cars and World War II raging overseas, the town began experiencing a decline.
Town historian Larry Crow said those events ultimately led to Nardin’s demise between people driving to Blackwell to shop and to Wichita, Kan., to work on the war efforts.
Eventually all the businesses faded away sans the grain elevator, the school closed with students bussing to Blackwell, and the town council voted to unincorporate in 1990, effectively shutting down the post office.
The last postmaster of Nardin was Sherrie Schatz, whose family had a farm between Blackwell and Tonkawa that now serves as the site of her marketing company Schatz Publishing Group.
Today, Nardin’s populace has withered to less than 50. But that hasn’t stopped Nardin from celebrating its rich Oklahoma heritage.
Preserving the memories
Crow grew up in Nardin.
His parents bought the house he still resides in to this day. His home is historic as the first mayor of Nardin, John Eilerts, built the house in 1898 and Nardin’s claim to fame Major League Baseball outfielder Les Layton was born in that house.
Leaving town after high school graduation to work then join the U.S. Navy, Crow came back to his hometown frequently to visit his folks.
While he was working for IBM in Wichita, he said the company encouraged staff to get involved in the community, so armed with his Spanish degree from the University of Oklahoma, he partnered with the SER Corporation (Service, Education, and Retraining) to help local Hispanic workers get prepared for the workforce.
That in turn inspired him to found the Friends of Nardin in 1977.
“That’s how I got the idea to find and preserve the heritage,” Crow said. “We restore buildings in town and make it a nicer place to live.”
His mom died in 1979 and his dad in 1981 leaving the home place vacant for nearly a decade before Crow bought it from his siblings and restored it following his early retirement from IBM in 1990.
Upon his return to Nardin, he ramped up his efforts to record the town history, especially since the community was on the verge of disappearing following the unincorporating.
Crow spent hour after hour, year after year, combing through Blackwell Journal-Tribune’s newspaper archives and interviewing long-time residents to pen an extensive history of Nardin—enough to publish two volumes with the assistance of Schatz Publishing Group.
To preserve his compilation of hundreds of newspaper clippings, photographs, school memorabilia, and other artifacts from the region, Friends of Nardin purchased Nardin’s old Baptist church across the street from Crow’s home on Memory Lane and dubbed it the Heritage House.
“I collected it all, built the tables and display cases, and assembled it all,” Crow said as he pointed out notable museum exhibits about the local land runs and Layton as well as 2nd Lt. Robert Markley, who was from Nardin and was the first serviceman from Oklahoma to perish in World War II at Pearl Harbor.
Celebrating Nardin’s heritage
Essentially Crow is the last man standing from Nardin’s olden days. Most everyone else has passed on or moved away.
Having turned 96 last month, Crow has no intention of slowing down despite his slow gait with a cane.
He still actively promotes his hometown through Friends of Nardin, planning events like Nardin Heritage Day and coordinating the maintenance of Nardin’s Main Street, which looks like a scene from the Old West with a general store, a saloon, and a blacksmith shop constructed downtown across the street from the town’s grain elevator.
It’s on Main Street where the action happens every May that draws several hundred people—former residents, history buffs, and car enthusiasts—to Nardin.
This annual tradition officially started with Nardin’s 80th birthday in May 1978, even though Friends of Nardin had other activities the year before with the inaugural kickoff of the organization. They brought in a steam engine and 10 vehicles participated in the parade. By the 1980s, over 100 antique vehicles entered the heritage parade, making it the largest antique vehicle parades in this part of the state.
Schatz Publishing Group produces the annual calendar that serves as Friends of Nardin’s primary fundraiser as well as spring newsletters and posters for the event that is now called Nardin’s Antique Vehicle Parade and Heritage Celebration.
This year’s celebration will be the 49th time Nardin has hosted visitors. Many festivities are planned from a gunfighter show by Guthrie Gunfighters and blacksmith demonstrations to watching a Model T being put together and running in 10 minutes. One of Crow’s sons is in a band called North of 50 that will be providing the western music. There will be plenty of kid-friendly fun including inflatables, Chester the Clown, an ice cream shoppe, and turtle races.
The parade starts at 10:30 a.m.; visitors will see antique cars and trucks, tractors, horse-drawn vehicles, mule teams, bikes, horse riders, and floats.
Following the gunfight, around 11:30 a.m., is the lunch feed at the pecan grove that Crow’s dad planted on the west side of Main Street with hamburgers, polish sausage, hot dogs and all the trimmings, homemade pies, and more for a fee.
The general store will be open as well as the saloon, which will be dispensing ice-cold sarsaparilla. Nardin’s Heritage House will be open too. The celebration concludes with an antique tractor pull around 1 p.m. south of town at the railroad tracks.
The 2026 Nardin Heritage Day is next Saturday, May 23, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in downtown Nardin. Admission to the event and museum tours are free. Sales of food and drink or other purchases are cash only, so be sure to stop by an ATM before arriving.