Editing McAlester, Oklahoma (section)

==History==
[[File:Pine tree, McAlester, Oklahoma (1916).jpg|thumb|right|upright|When this street in McAlester was paved in 1916, the city saved this pine tree and built a fence around it]]
The crossing of the east–west [[California Road]] with the north–south [[Texas Road]] formed a natural point of settlement. At the time of its founding, the site was located in [[Tobucksy County, Choctaw Nation|Tobucksy County]], a part of the [[Moshulatubbee District]] of the [[Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma|Choctaw Nation]].<ref>Morris, John W.  ''Historical Atlas of Oklahoma'' (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1986), plate 38.</ref> Alyssia Young, who emigrated from Mississippi to the Indian Territory, first established a settlement at the intersection of the two roads in 1838. The town was named Perryville after James Perry, member of a Choctaw family, who established a trading post.<ref name="OklahomaFWP">[https://books.google.com/books?id=HvlFlr7fS0QC&dq=perryville+oklahoma&pg=PA340  ''Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State''.] Federal Writers Project, pg. 340 (1941); retrieved September 21, 2014.</ref> At one time Perryville was the capital of the Choctaw Nation and County Seat of [[Tobucksy County, Choctaw Nation|Tobucksy County]]. During the [[American Civil War]], the Choctaw allied with the [[Confederate States of America]] (CSA) as the war reached [[Indian Territory]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wbtsinindianterritory.com.istemp.com/|title=Home Page|website=www.wbtsinindianterritory.com.istemp.com}}</ref>

A depot providing supplies to Confederate Forces in Indian Territory was set up at Perryville. On August 26, 1863, a force of 4,500 Union soldiers crossed the Canadian River and destroyed the Confederate munitions depot at Perryville. This became known as the [[Battle of Perryville]], Indian Territory. Union Major General [[James G. Blunt]], finding the Confederate supplies and realizing that Perryville was a major supply depot for Confederate forces, ordered the town burned. The town was rebuilt but never reached its prewar glory or population.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Captain J. J. McAlester obtained a job with the trading company of Reynolds and Hannaford. McAlester convinced the firm to locate a general store at Tupelo in the Choctaw Nation. He had learned of coal deposits in Indian Territory during the war while serving as a captain with the [[22nd Arkansas Infantry Regiment]] (Confederate). At [[Fort Smith, Arkansas]], before going to work with Reynolds and Hannaford, McAlester had received maps of the coal deposits from engineer Oliver Weldon, who served with McAlester during the war.<ref name="McAlesterCityHistory">[http://www.cityofmcalester.com/index.aspx?nid=130 "History of McAlester." City of McAlester.] Accessed February 13, 2017.</ref>

Weldon had worked for the U.S. surveying Indian Territory before the war and knew of the coal deposits. Hearing of the railroad plans to extend through Indian Territory and knowing that rich deposits of coal were in an area north of the town of Perryville, McAlester convinced Reynolds and Hannaford that Bucklucksy would be a more suitable and profitable site for the trading post.{{efn|Bucklucksy was an unincorporated community north of McAlester until part of it was submerged by the creation of [[Eufaula Lake|Lake Eufaula]].}} He constructed a trading post/general store there in late 1869. The Bucklucksy general store was an immediate success, but McAlester recognized an even greater opportunity in the abundance of coal deposits in the area, so he began obtaining rights to the deposits from the Choctaws, anticipating the impending construction of a rail line through Indian Territory.<ref name="McAlesterCityHistory"/>

As the first railroad to extend its line to the northern border of Indian Territory, the [[Union Pacific Railway]] Southern Branch earned [[Right-of-way (transportation)|right of way]] and a liberal bonus of land to extend the line to [[Texas]]. Several New York businessmen, including [[Levi P. Morton]], [[Parsons, Kansas|Levi Parsons]], [[August Belmont]], [[J. Pierpont Morgan]], George Denison and [[John D. Rockefeller]], were interested in extending rail through Indian Territory, and the [[Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad]], familiarly called the Katy Railroad, began its corporate existence in 1865 toward that end. Morton and Parsons selected a site near the Kansas&nbsp;Indian Territory border where they incorporated the settlement of [[Parsons, Kansas]] in 1871.<ref name="McAlesterCityHistory"/>

That same year, J. J. McAlester, after buying out Reynolds's share of the trading post, journeyed with a sample of coal to the railroad town in hopes of persuading officials to locate the line near his store at Bucklucksy. The trading post's location on the Texas Road weighed in its favor, given that the Katy line construction roughly followed the [[Texas Road|Shawnee Trail]] – Texas Road route south to the [[Red River of the South|Red River]]. The line reached Bucklucksy in 1872, and Katy Railroad officials named the [[railway stop]] McAlester {{Harv|Nesbitt|1933|pp=760–61}}.

With the coming of the railroad, businesses in nearby Perryville began relocating to be near the McAlester Rail Depot, marking the end of Perryville and the beginning of McAlester. On August 22, 1872, J. J. McAlester married Rebecca Burney (1841–1919). She was a member of the Chickasaw Nation, which made it possible for McAlester to gain citizenship and the right to own property (including mineral rights to the coal deposits in both the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations). McAlester quickly obtained land near the intersection of the north–south and east–west rail lines, where he opened a second general store and continued selling coal to the railroads.<ref name="EOHC-McAlester"/>

In 1885, Fritz Sittle (Sittel), a Choctaw citizen by marriage and one of the first settlers in the area, urged visiting newspaperman Edwin D. Chadick to pursue the possibility of an east–west rail line to run through the coal mining district at [[Krebs, Oklahoma|Krebs]] that would connect with the north–south line at McAlester. Chadick eventually found financing and established the [http://www.scripophily.net/chocokandgul4.html Choctaw Coal and Railway] in 1888, but was unable to come to terms with J. J. McAlester over the issue of [[Right-of-way (transportation)|right of way]].

In the 1870s, miners from Pennsylvania arrived in McAlester to work in the coal mines.<ref name="Stanley">Stanley Clark, {{cite book |url=https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/singleitem/image/p17279coll4/22983/default.jpg?highlightTerms= | title =Immigrants in the Choctaw Coal Industry | first=Stanley|last=clark| series =The Chronicles of Oklahoma | volume = 33 | date =1955 |access-date=20 March 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180321032302/https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/singleitem/image/p17279coll4/22983/default.jpg?highlightTerms= | archive-date= 21 March 2018 | url-status=live}}</ref> Miners of Italian origin arrived in McAlester in 1874.<ref name="Stanley"/>

Chadick and his investors purchased land to the south of McAlester's General Store, and a natural trading crossroads formed where the two rail lines crossed, quickly becoming a bustling community called South McAlester.{{efn|South McAlester was about {{convert | 1.5|miles|km}} south of the original town, which became known familiarly as North McAlester or North Town, although early U.S. Census records simply identified it as McAlester.<ref name="EOHC-McAlester"/>}} South McAlester grew much more rapidly than North McAlester. The 1900 census showed a population of 3,470 for the former and 642 for the latter.<ref name="EOHC-McAlester"/>

The two towns operated as somewhat separate communities until 1907, when the United States Congress passed an act joining them as a single municipality, the action being required since the towns were under federal jurisdiction in Indian Territory. McAlester and South McAlester were combined under the single name McAlester, with South McAlester officeholders as officials of the single town. Designation as a single community by the United States Post Office came on July 1, 1907, nearly five months before Oklahoma statehood, which caused a redrawing of county lines and designations such that the majority of Tobucksy County fell within the new lines of [[Pittsburg County]]. The city had 8,144 inhabitants upon statehood, more than a fourth of whom were foreign-born.<ref name="Stanley"/>

McAlester was on the route of the [[Jefferson Highway]] established in 1915, with that road running more than 2,300 miles from Winnipeg, Manitoba to New Orleans, Louisiana.<ref>{{cite web|url= https://www.jeffersonhighwayinoklahoma.com/ |title=The Jefferson Highway Route in Oklahoma|publisher= Oklahoma Members of the Jefferson Highway Association|access-date=October 27, 2019}}</ref>

McAlester was the site of the 2004 trial of [[Terry Nichols]] on Oklahoma state charges related to the 1995 [[Oklahoma City bombing]]. On December 25, 2000, an ice storm hit the area, leaving residents without electrical service and water for more than two weeks; in January 2007, another devastating [[ice storm]] crippled the city, leaving residents without [[Electric power|power]] and water for more than a week.<ref name="McAlesterCityHistory"/>