Artist Lowell Davis grew up in the “real” Red Oak,  about 18 miles northwest of the “new” Red Oak II. The original Red Oak, like many other rural agricultural towns across the USA, started to fade sometime after World War II, when people began to move to the cities in earnest.

Davis returned in the 1970’s to find his home town had become a ghost town and by 1987, Davis was living on a farm near Carthage that was little more than an empty cornfield. His creative inspiration soon led him to turn his acreage into a tribute to his home town and before long Red Oak II was born. He began to buy homes and businesses from the original townsite and other rural ghost towns painstakingly moving them to the new site and restoring them to their original grandeur.