During the 1880s the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, more popularly known as the "Frisco", built a north–south line through the Choctaw Nation, connecting Fort Smith, Arkansas with Paris, Texas. The US treaties required the tribes to grant the railroads rights of way. The railroad paralleled the Kiamichi River throughout much of its route in present-day Pushmataha County. The railroads established train stations every few miles to be centers of new development. They also were the sites of section houses; supervisors for their respective miles of track lived in the section houses to administer the track and its right-of-way. These stations also served as points at which the trains could draw water.