Perry's original name was Wharton, the name of a train station built in 1886 by the Southern Kansas Railway (part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway system) about 1 mile south of the present city and it was located within the Outlet. Before the 1893 Cherokee Outlet Opening, the U.S. government selected a site a mile north of Wharton for a land office. A town around the office was named after J.A. Perry, a man sent by the government to lay out land office towns. Perry later became one of the township location commissioners. Noble County, then known as "County P", was named after John Willock Noble of St. Louis, the Interior Secretary for President William Henry Harrison.