Aiken

Aiken is on U.S. Highway 70 and the Santa Fe Railroad four miles northwest of Lockney in northwest Floyd County. The settlement was named for Frank Aiken, who owned the townsite and secured a post office in August 1922. In 1923 the new Aiken school district replaced an earlier school named Meteor. Aiken had four businesses, a school, and 110 residents by 1947. During the mid-1950s it had two grocery stores, two cafes, two service stations, and a Methodist church. Early residents included the Elam, Marshall, Young, Lucas, Roach, Langfeldt, and Owens families. Most of the services have closed, partly because of changes in agricultural production and farming. Paymaster Seeds, a division of Cargill, Incorporated, once operated a plant at Aiken that shipped an annual average of 300,000 to 400,000 fifty-pound bags of seed worldwide. Cargill also had a research facility three miles north of the community. A Southwestern Grain elevator was located there. North of the town was a community Baptist church. Although some Aiken residents believed the number to be too high, the 1980 census reported a population of 140. In 1990 the population was sixty and in 2000 the population was fifty-seven.