Pauls Valley: Smith Paul's Valley

In eighteen forty-seven, a North Carolina native named Smith Paul established a plantation at the confluence of Rush Creek and the Washita River, deep in Chickasaw Nation territory. Paul had married a Chickasaw woman and become a citizen of the Nation, and the rich bottomland became known locally as Smith Paul's Valley. Official recognition arrived in eighteen seventy-one when the community received a post office, mistakenly registered under the district of Arkansas because Indian Territory was then administered from Fort Smith.

The Santa Fe Railway pushed through in eighteen eighty-seven, and by eighteen ninety-two the formal town plat was laid out, though the Dawes Commission did not approve it until nineteen oh three. Today Pauls Valley sits at the heart of Garvin County, population just under six thousand, still carrying that first settler's name.