Idabel is a city in and county seat of McCurtain County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 7,010 at the 2010 census. It is located in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, a tourist Place known as Choctaw Country.

Idabel was established in 1902 by the Arkansas and Choctaw Railway (later share of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, the lineage now subconscious operated by the Kiamichi Railroad). The city was first named Purnell, after Isaac Purnell, a railroad official. When postal officials rejected that designation, the post was changed to Mitchell, honoring other railroad company officer. Postal officials also rejected because another post office of that state existed elsewhere in the territory. They named the make known office Bokhoma (a Choctaw word meaning Red River), which opened December 15, 1902. Railroad officials later chose the post Idabel, a multiple of the names of Isaac Purnell’s two daughters, Ida and Bell. The reveal office was later renamed Idabel.

At the period of its founding, Idabel was located in Bok Tuklo County, a portion of the Apukshunubbee District of the Choctaw Nation.

For its first four years, Idabel local meting out was the answerability of the Choctaw tribe for the Indians themselves. The national organization was held responsible for enforcing the perform among non-Choctaws. In 1906, the citizens elected their first mayor and traditional a mayor-council form of government. At the mature of statehood, November 16, 1907, the town was designated as the county seat of McCurtain County. A census in that year reported 726 residents. By 1910, the population had grown to 1,493. In 1920, there were 3,617 residents, but the number fell to 2,581 in 1930. Growth resumed by the halt of the Great Depression in the late 1930s.