Eucha is a small community in Delaware County, in the far northeast corner of Oklahoma, amid the wooded hills of the Ozark Plateau. Pronounced "oochee," the community sits north of Lake Eucha, east of Spavinaw Lake, and southeast of Grand Lake o' the Cherokees, in a landscape of reservoirs, creeks, and oak-and-hickory forest. The name is rooted in Cherokee history. Eucha was named for Oochelata, a principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and the surrounding region is part of the Cherokee Nation's historic Delaware District. The Lenape, or Delaware people, for whom the county is named, settled in the area in the early nineteenth century, and the Western Cherokee moved into the region in 1828. Delaware County was created at statehood in 1907, with Jay as its county seat. Water defines modern Eucha. Lake Eucha, a 2,800-acre reservoir south of Jay on U.S. Highway 59, serves both as a drinking-water source managed for the city of Tulsa and as a recreation lake, with campgrounds and boat ramps. Grand Lake o' the Cherokees, one of Oklahoma's largest and most popular lakes, lies just to the northwest, drawing boaters and vacation-home buyers to the broader area. The Spavinaw Wildlife Management Area, covering more than 14,000 acres south of the lake, offers hunting and wildlife viewing. Eucha itself is small and lightly developed — the census designations of Old Eucha and New Eucha together count only a few hundred people — but its lakeside setting and proximity to Tulsa, about an hour to the west, give it appeal for those seeking a quiet, rural, water-oriented life in the Cherokee country.