The Artesian Hotel

The original hotel was built in 1906 using bricks from the Bland Hotel^[2] and decorated with furniture from the St. Louis World's Fair.^[3] It was a four-story brick building, and contained the town's only elevator.^[2] The architects J.M. Bayless and C.J. Webster named it the Artesian after an artesian well was discovered during construction. Carrie Nation, William Howard Taft, William H. Murray, Roy J. Turner and John Wayne all stayed at the hotel.^[2][4] It served as a summer residence for Oklahoma's first governor Charles N. Haskell.^[2][4] The original building was destroyed by fire in 1962 and replaced in 1965 by a plain 72 unit building constructed at a cost of a half-million dollars. The new building was named The Artesian Motor Hotel.^[3][4]

In 1972, The Artesian Motor Hotel was on the verge of bankruptcy and was purchased at auction by the Chickasaw Nation, which remodeled it and renamed it the Chickasaw Motor Inn.^[4] The Chickasaw Motor Inn served as the tribal headquarters from 1972 until 1977,^[5] when the Chickasaw Nation built its current tribal headquarters in Ada, Oklahoma.^[4] Groundbreaking on the newest building, modeled after the 1906 hotel, was held on October 14, 2010.