Purcell: Queen City of the Chickasaw Nation

Purcell was born as a railroad town in eighteen eighty-seven, on a bluff above the South Canadian River, and was named for Edward B. Purcell, a director of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The location, in the heart of the Chickasaw Nation, made Purcell the natural hub of Indian Territory commerce south of Oklahoma City.

Boosters called it the Queen City of the Chickasaw Nation. When the Land Run of eighteen eighty-nine opened the Unassigned Lands to the north, Purcell served as a staging point for thousands of settlers lined up on the south bank of the Canadian River. The Purcell Register, founded in eighteen eighty-seven, kept publishing into the twenty-first century.