page_title: Eufaula, Oklahoma
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eufaula, Oklahoma / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This was taken at a unknown date. I was able to get this from Harmon Davis's only son Clark Davis who is also a radio DJ. Harmon Davis Harmon C. Davis grew up in rural Oklahoma. His family was always musically inclined, so he naturally learned how to play the guitar at a young age in his life. Later on, he learned to play the steel guitar, and mastered the instrument. He played in his brothers bluegrass band, Olen and The Bluegrass Traveler's, every weekend on his radio station, KCES FM. Harmon Davis had the first radio station in Southeastern Oklahoma. It was KCES FM. The station survived from the mid fifties until about 1999 when he sold the station to KFOX FM. The radio station was very important to the small town and was the Lake Eufaula Giant, the voice could be heard all over Lake Eufaula by turning into the station 102.3.
context_page_description: Eufaula is a city and county seat of McIntosh County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,813 at the 2010 census, an increase of 6.6 percent from 2,639 in 2000. Eufaula is in the southern part of the county, 30 miles north of McAlester and 32 miles south of Muskogee.
  The name "Eufaula" comes from the Eufaula tribe, part of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy. The town and county are within the jurisdiction of the federally recognized Muscogee Nation, descendants of the tribe who were removed here from the Southeastern United States in the 1830s.
context_section_description: In the Southeast, the Muscogee people (then known as Creek by European Americans) occupied a large territory including much of present-day Georgia and Alabama. By 1800, the Creek had a village named Eufala, located on Eufaula Creek, near what later developed as the present site of Talladega, Alabama. This was one of a group called their Upper Creek towns. Pickett's History of Alabama mentions an Indian town, belonging to the Creek, which he calls Eufaulahatche. Little Eufauly is mentioned by an historian of this period as early as 1792. Another Upper Creek town called Eufaula was located on the Tallapoosa River; the present town of Dadeville, Alabama developed near there.
  The Lower Creek had two villages of similar names: Eufaula on the Chattahoochee River, in what later became Henry County, Alabama; and Eufala, located on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, within the limits of present Quitman County, Georgia.
  In 1832 the U. S. Government had forced the Creek to move to Indian Territory and cede their lands in the Southeastern United States, as part of a series of cessions they had made. They established Eufaula as a center of Creek in their new territory. It was a frequent meeting place of the people, who held pow-wows or Indian conferences in that vicinity during the early days of Creek settlement.
  In the 1870s G. W. Grayson, then Chief of the Creek, his brother Samuel, George Stidham and other Creek leaders, persuaded the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway (known as the KATY) to locate one of its stations at this site. The older Creek village was moved here to take advantage of the railroad.
  Eufaula, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), began to attract European Americans soon after the KATY railroad established a station here in 1872. The town was named after George W. Ingall, US Indian agent for the Five Civilized Tribes, suggested the name Eufaula, after the earlier Muscogee tribal town in Alabama. Eufaula incorporated as a town in Indian Territory by 1898.
  D. B. Whitlow and Joseph Coody established the first store on the west side of the railroad. The Graysons and G. E. Seales started a store on the east side about the same time. Dr. W. H. Bailey was the first physician and druggist to locate in the new town. Rev. R. C. McGee, a Presbyterian missionary, established one of the first churches in Eufaula. He served there as minister for many years. For years before the American Civil War, the Asbury Mission School, located two miles northeast of Eufaula, was the leading educational institution of that vicinity. It was burned in an accidental fire.
caption: Harmon Davis playing steel guitar
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