Shady Point, OK

Shady Point is a Le Flore County town in southeastern Oklahoma, where the 2020 census counted 972 residents. A post office opened at Harrison in Indian Territory in 1891; the name became Shady Point in 1894. The Poteau Valley Railroad reached the nearby mines at Sutter, later renamed Calhoun, and made Shady Point a coal-shipping point six miles north of Poteau. Shady Point sits in the Poteau Valley, with the Ouachita foothills rising beyond the roads.

Coal shaped the town's first commercial map, and the industry later gave way to power generation. The AES Shady Point plant opened in the region in 1991 and burned Oklahoma coal for electricity at the end of the twentieth century. Sites around town include Dog Creek School, Shady Point School, and Trahern's Station, each holding a piece of the area's education, railroad, or rural settlement history. Shady Point's roads now connect it with Poteau and the Ouachita foothills, while its name keeps the older post-office and rail town in view.