Edward Everett Dale (February 8, 1879 – May 28, 1972) was an American historian and longtime faculty member of the University of Oklahoma.

He was a proponent of Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" and is known as a major influence on the historian Angie Debo.

[1] Dale was born on February 8, 1879, in a rural area called "Cross Timbers" near Keller, Tarrant County, Texas.

[6] Attendance at a summer Normal Institute sponsored by Washita County gave him a certificate to teach school with the goal of earning money to buy calves for the ranch he and brother were trying to establish.

Oklahoma, where settlers incorporated the remnants of both the indigenous Native American tribes and the so-called "Five civilized tribes" that had been forcibly resettled from the Southeastern United States, developed a particularly unique unwritten law he called "Cow Custom", that later became embedded in the state's legal code and institutions.

[14] Angie Debo enrolled in a class Dale taught at the University of Oklahoma on American history and government in 1916, and again in January 1917.

[22] In addition to his historical writing, Dale wrote two reminiscences, Cross Timbers, Memories of a North Texas Boyood and West Wind Blows.