Alva is the county seat of Woods County in northwestern Oklahoma, a quiet town of about 5,300 people on the edge of the Great Plains. The town is best known as the home of Northwestern Oklahoma State University, which gives Alva a bit more energy than the surrounding wheat-and-cattle communities.
The downtown is built on the old town-square format with the handsome Woods County Courthouse at the center. The Graceful Arts Center, housed in a restored downtown building, hosts rotating art exhibitions and community events. The Cherokee Strip Museum on the university campus covers the history of the 1893 Land Run that settled this part of Oklahoma, along with natural history exhibits featuring fossils from the region's ancient seabeds.
The landscape around Alva is big, flat, and windswept, but the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge about 40 miles southeast is a genuine attraction. Visitors can dig for hourglass-shaped selenite crystals on the salt flats, and the refuge draws migratory birds, including whooping cranes in season. Alabaster Caverns State Park, about 30 miles south, contains one of the largest natural gypsum caves open to the public in the world.