Earlsboro is a town in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 628 at the 2010 census, a grow less of 0.8 percent from the figure of 633 in 2000. It was afterward called “…the town that whisky built and oil broke.”

The town of Earlsborough (as it was spelled upon the town plat) began in 1891, when the Choctaw Coal and Railway (later the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad) built a lineage west from the Seminole Nation into Oklahoma Territory.
The town was located one-half mile inside Oklahoma Territory. It was named for James Earls, a local African American who had served as an orderly for Confederate General Joseph Wheeler during the Civil War. The spelling of the town reveal changed as soon as the Earlsboro publicize office opened upon June 12, 1895.

The town had an economic boom from the outset because Indian Territory was legally “dry,” but Oklahoma Territory was not. The first three businesses were saloons, and it was said that 90 percent of the merchants were engaged in liquor sales. By 1905, the town had a population estimated at 500. Many customers were visitors from Indian Territory.

Statehood brought prohibition to anything of Oklahoma, and the population of Earlsboro speedily dropped to 387. The local economy once relied on agriculture instead of liquor. Oil was struck nearby on March 1, 1926. The first with ease produced 200 barrels a day. News of the strike attracted workers, and the town population increased to an estimated ten thousand people within two months. The ensuing boom led to construction of a one hundred thousand dollar hotel, a large theater, and many substitute kinds of business. In 1929, the town passed a $225,000 hold issue to construct a water and sewer system. The population was officially 1,950 at the 1930 census.