The railroad completed its line in 1899 . Its parent company, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, took over the line and property . The first train came into Elm Creek on November 1, 1899 . As the land around the end of this railroad developed, the Osage Indian word Owasso , meaning “the end” or “turn around”, was adopted to identify the area because the rail line ended in a turnaround “Y” near the depot . The name of the Elm Creek post office was officially changed to Owasso on January 24, 1900 . The rail line was not extended into Tulsa until 1905 . A plat of the original townsite of Owasso, Cherokee Nation, I .T . was signed by the Secretary of the Interior on March 26, 1904, in connection with the town’s incorporation . That plat shows three streets running north and south and eight streets running east and west . The north/south streets were named Oklahoma, Kansas & Missouri, and the east/west streets north of what is now Broadway were named for Union generals, while the east/west streets to the south were named for Confederate generals . These names were later changed, and are now named after streets . The original street names were changed to their present names in about 1960 . By the time Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907, Owasso had a population of 379 within the town limits . The first newspaper was The Owasso Ledger, and was first published on August 7, 1903 by U . P . Wardrip . The subscription price was $1 .00 per year, paid in advance . The Pioneer Telephone and Telegraph Company was granted a franchise on February 6, 1905 for the town’s first telephone exchange . Until the first water tower was erected in 1924, with Spavinaw as the water source, water was brought into town in barrels from the Owasso Lake & sold for .50 a barrel. .