The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

SHADY POINT.

Located in Le Flore County approximately six miles north of Poteau, Shady Point lies adjacent to U.S. Highway 271. Originally in the Choctaw Nation, the community had a school named Double Springs, which was developed by the tribal government, with the help of the Presbyterian Church. By 1891 a post office designated Harrison served the settlement. In 1894 the designation changed to Shady Point and moved east to the proposed route of the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad.

It laid tracks through the area in 1895–96. In 1900 the Kansas City Southern Railway purchased the railroad.

The community benefited from the region's timber, agriculture, and coal mining industries. The town prospered as a shipping point for coal extracted from nearby mines at Sutter, which became Calhoun in 1914. In 1900–1901 the Poteau Valley Railroad built tracks from Shady Point to the mines at Calhoun. In 1926 the line was abandoned as the coal industry waned. In 1901 Shady Point's estimated population stood at two hundred, and they supported four general stores, a blacksmith, a cotton gin, a gristmill, a grocery store, a drugstore, and two doctors. Choctaw lawyer and politician Jacob B. Jackson lived at the village and was buried in the cemetery in 1909. By 1911 the community had added a rooming house, and in 1918 its population was judged to be five hundred. By 1932 the economic emphasis had shifted to agriculture, and the town supported a cotton gin and three grain mills. In 1946 the only significant businesses were three grocery stores, a general store, and a service station, and by 1955 two more gas stations had located in the community.

Shady Point incorporated in 1970. In 1978 the Evans Coal Company opened a deep shaft mine nearby, but after two workers died the next year, the mine closed in 1980. By that year the town's population registered 235. In 1991 AES (Applied Energy Services) Corporation established the Shady Point AES power plant in the region, and by the end of the twentieth century the plant burned more than half of the coal produced in Oklahoma. The town's 1990 population stood at 597. In 2000 the prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade school system enrolled 167 students. In 2000 Shady Point's population stood at 848. The 2010 census registered 1,026 residents in the town. The April 2020 census found 969 living there. In 1988 the Shady Point School (NR 88001405), which had been built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Two other properties in the vicinity, Trahern's Station (NR 72001073) and the WPA–constructed Dog Creek School (NR 88001399), were also listed in the Register in 1972 and 1988, respectively.

Larry O'Dell

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