Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Poteau, OK

Poteau is the county seat and largest city of Le Flore County in southeastern Oklahoma, sitting about twelve miles west of the Arkansas state line.

Poteau was founded in 1885 as a cluster of a few houses and Bud Tate's general store, at a time when the site lay in Sugar Loaf County of the Choctaw Nation's Moshulatubbee District.

Poteau takes its name from the nearby Poteau River — poteau is the French word for 'post,' a reference to a French outpost established upriver at the base of Cavanal Mountain in the late 1700s.

French explorer Bernard de la Harpe led a party through the Poteau area in 1719 and gave the river its present name.

Poteau was incorporated as a town in Indian Territory by the federal government on October 8, 1898, the same year its first stone public building, a school, was built.

Poteau had a population of 8,807 in the 2020 census, living in 3,239 households, and about 58% of its occupied homes were owner-occupied.

Poteau sits in the valley below Cavanal Hill, billed by a sign at its base as the 'World's Highest Hill' at 1,999 feet — just one foot short of the 2,000-foot threshold that would make it a mountain; its summit actually reaches 2,385 feet above sea level and rises 1,960 feet above the Poteau River.

The slopes around Cavanal Hill were extensively mined for coal during the first half of the twentieth century, served by the Poteau and Cavanal Mountain Railroad.

Poteau has recorded a temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, tying it with several other towns for the highest temperature ever recorded in Oklahoma.

Poteau is home to Carl Albert State College, founded as Poteau Junior College and now one of Oklahoma's thirteen state colleges, and to a branch of the Kiamichi Technology Center.