Poteau ( POH-toh) is a city in, and county chair of, Le Flore County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 8,520 as of the 2010 census.

In 1719, Bernard de la Harpe led a organization of French explorers through this area and gave the river its gift name. The present day city was founded in 1885, its make known derived from the user-friendly Poteau River. During the late 1700s, there was a large French outpost at Belle Point (Ft. Smith). From there, they would travel up the Poteau River to a supplementary post at the base of Cavanal Mountain. Because of this, the river was named the “Post River”, or Poteau River, and the outpost was handily called the post, or “Poteau”. A charity of French explorers gave the river its gift name during the beforehand 18th Century. Poteau is a French word meaning post.

The Poteau Chamber of Commerce has written that the community was founded in 1885 as a few houses and Bud Tate’s general store. At the become old of its founding, Poteau was in Sugar Loaf County, a allowance of the Moshulatubbee District of the Choctaw Nation. It was incorporated as a town in the Indian Territory by the federal government upon October 8, 1898. The first rock public building, a school, was built in the same year.

The Fort Smith and Southern Railway built a rail heritage through the Poteau Place in 1886–1887, en route to Paris, Texas, including a station within the city. The Poteau publish office opened in 1887 and the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad (acquired by the Kansas City Southern Railway in 1900) began serving the town in 1896.