During the Osage oil boom of the 1910s and 1920s, Pawhuska was the site of big-money public auctions of oil and gas leases under the so-called “Million Dollar Elm” next to the Osage Council House. The population grew to 6,414 by 1920. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad extended its line from Owen, a community in Washington County, to Pawhuska in 1923. As the oil boom declined and the Great Depression set in, the population declined. The steady decline has continued to the present.