Chouteau is a town in Mayes County, Oklahoma, in the northeastern corner of the state. It is the second-largest town in the county, with about 2,060 residents at the 2020 census. The name honors the Chouteau family of St. Louis fur traders, whose members were instrumental in establishing some of the first permanent Euroamerican settlements in present-day Oklahoma; Auguste Pierre Chouteau ran trading stations across the region in the early 19th century. The town's location also tied it to the Jefferson Highway, one of the nation's first transcontinental automobile routes. Chouteau sits about four miles from the MidAmerica Industrial Park, Oklahoma's largest industrial park, which was created in 1960 and helped drive the town's growth in the following decade. That proximity gives Chouteau a role as a residential community for workers at the park and in the surrounding northeastern Oklahoma economy, which blends manufacturing, logistics, and agriculture. The town also serves as a gateway to the eastern Oklahoma lake region, with Fort Gibson Lake and the Grand Lake O' the Cherokees within reach for boating, fishing, and recreation. The Chouteau-Mazie Public Schools serve the community in a small pre-K through twelfth-grade district. Housing in Chouteau is a mix of small-town single-family homes and rural acreage, and most residents own their homes. Established neighborhoods near the town center give way to rural homesites on surrounding roads, offering a spread-out, low-density setting typical of northeastern Oklahoma's smaller towns. The town's blend of industrial-park access, lake recreation, and small-town character defines its place in Mayes County.