ENID

city, seat (1907) of Garfield county, north-central Oklahoma, U.S. Located at a watering place on the Chisholm (cattle) Trail (reached by the Rock Island Railroad in 1889), it was founded overnight as a tent city around a U.S. land office when the Cherokee Strip was opened by settlers on Sept. 16, 1893. Tents and shacks quickly gave way to frame houses and business establishments. The settlement was supposedly named for the character Enid in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Enid subsequently became the commercial and cultural centre of northwestern Oklahoma. Wheat, cattle, and oil are its principal economic resources. Industries include flour and grain milling, meat processing, dairying, oil refining, and the manufacture of oil-field equipment. Enid is the site of Phillips University (1906), and Vance Air Force Base is nearby. Inc. 1894. Pop. (1990) city, 45,309; Enid MSA, 56,735.