Seiling: Choate's yard at the crossroads of the northwest

Dewey County sits between the western STACK and the deeper Anadarko Basin. Leases here and in the counties around it are spread out, so where the trucks start matters. From the Seiling Yard, US-270 runs southeast toward Watonga and northwest toward Woodward, US-60 runs east and west, and US-183 runs north and south.

Water from the Seiling area goes to Choate-owned wells in Blaine County: Fay SWD #1-31 first, then Fox #1-8 and Pierce #1-34H, 42 and 44 road miles out. It is a longer run than in Kingfisher County, and dispatch plans it that way, but it ends at a well Choate owns and runs.

Call 405-463-9527 any hour for leases around Seiling and across Dewey County.

Seiling is named for Louis Seiling, who claimed a homestead here in the Cheyenne-Arapaho opening of 1892 and kept the store where the post office opened in 1894. The town, first called Hobson, took his name in 1899 and was incorporated in 1909. It never had a railroad, the nearest depot being more than 25 miles away at Canton, so the highways became its lifeline. From about 1925 to 1951 the Seiling race meet made it "the Little Louisville of Oklahoma racing", and the old Seiling Milling Company flour mill is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Oil and gas came to Seiling in the 1960s, when the Seiling field was developed and Shell and more than fifty other producers opened a gasoline plant west of town in 1968. Today the town's own list of its economy runs from agriculture to oil, gas and nitrogen services, wind energy and transportation.

Seiling High School's Wildcats are a small-school powerhouse. The Lady Wildcats won Class A state basketball titles four years running from 2016 to 2019 and again from 2022 to 2024, and the football team won Class B state championships in 2023, beating Velma-Alma 48–16, and in 2025, beating Weleetka 60–12. TV meteorologist Gary England and major-leaguer Jordy Mercer both come from Seiling, and Canton Lake is a short drive east.