Little Axe Middle School History

A Short History

        The community of Little Axe was named after a Shawnee Indian Chief.  The land was settled in  1886 by the Big Jim Band of the Shawnee.  They came to the area when the government tried to force the Shawnee Indians to settle in an area given to them in Pottawatomie County.  The Big Jim Band resisted and came to the area eventually known as the Little Axe Community.  A school was built here--the year it was built is unknown to us at this time--which in time grew to a class B school.

Little Axe School Building 1963

         The area where the Little Axe Community was located is the area where Lake Thunderbird was mapped, in the early 1960s.  With the creation of Lake Thunderbird, the old community of Little Axe was destroyed.  After the lake was put in, the Little Axe School was rebuilt around 4 miles east of the Lake Thunderbird Dam, which is located near the area of the original Little Axe Community.  The Little Axe School had been a 2nd to 8th grade school prior to the building of the lake.   Since then Little Axe has grown to a K-12 school, with the first senior class graduating in 1988.  Currently Little Axe has one of the larger student populations of a Class 3A school in Oklahoma.

    The Little Axe Middle School was established in 1992 as a separate school.  Today there are approximately 300 students attending this school in grades six, seven and eight.