The March 24, 1832, Treaty of Cusseta provided land allotment and some federal compensation for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation emigration from Alabama to Indian Territory. The boundaries included the land between the confluence of the North and South Canadian rivers. In 1848 the Methodist Church established the Asbury Manual Training School. After it burned in 1889, students attended the Creek Nation's Eufaula Boarding School for Girls.
In 1872 Eufaula emerged as a town when the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway established a railhead at the site, near North Fork Town. George W. Ingall, Indian agent for the Five Tribes, suggested the name Eufaula, after a Muscogee tribal town in Alabama. Spring floods washed out the bridge that a railroad company was building over the South Canadian River. The rebuilding delay brought people and materials to the developing town. The federal census of 1890 recorded a population of 500 in the community. By 1898 Eufaula had incorporated and had grown to approximately eight hundred residents.
Nearby, the Creeks successfully grew cotton and corn in the rich soil of the river bottoms. Dairy and cattle operations expanded as well. The number of residents climbed to 2,355 in 1940, holding near that number for the next three decades.
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