Sallisaw is the county seat and largest city of Sequoyah County, in far eastern Oklahoma near the Arkansas state line. The city sits at an elevation of about 531 feet in hilly country that flattens into bottomland toward the Arkansas River to the south. Interstate 40, a major transcontinental corridor, passes along the city's northern edge, and U.S. Highways 59 and 64 converge in town. The name Sallisaw derives from the French word salaison, meaning salt meat or salt provisions, a term recorded by travelers as early as 1819 when the area was part of Arkansas Territory. The community grew as an agricultural and trade center, and when Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907, Sallisaw became the seat of the newly formed Sequoyah County. The city's early growth was tied to farming, ranching, and later to its position on the region's highway and rail routes. Sallisaw holds a distinctive place in American literature. John Steinbeck used the city as the home of the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, his novel about Oklahoma families who left the Dust Bowl for California during the Great Depression. The connection is a point of local identity, even though the town itself sits in the wooded, eastern part of the state rather than the plains most associated with the Dust Bowl. Today Sallisaw functions as a regional commercial and government center, with county offices, retail, and services concentrated along the Interstate 40 corridor. Its location near Robert S. Kerr Lake and the Cookson Hills, and its proximity to Fort Smith, Arkansas, make it both a service hub and a base for lake recreation.