Cyrus Kingsbury, established the Yakni Achukma (Choctaw for "Good Land") mission station in 1835, in southeastern Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma).

[3] In 1848, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Presbyterian and Congregational organization, recognized the need for a permanent missionary to Good Land and sent Rev.

Prior to accepting the appointment to Good Land Mission, Mr. Stark was superintendent of Old Spencer Academy for Indians.

Margaret Stark wasted no time in starting to teach the Indian children in the area how to read and write.

[3] In 1852, Oliver Porter Stark — with help from Henry L. Gooding and other Choctaw neighbors — built the structure that served the community as both church and school for 42 years.

Although moved several feet from the original location in 1894, the same church, renovated many times and enlarged, stands on the Goodland campus today.

Stark also dug the first well, which was still being used in 1932 when it was sealed and covered by the present concrete steps of the old Goodland High School.

Stark wrote to the mission board to report on the bands of robbers and lawlessness that existed in the area at the time.

He requested reassignment and was transferred to Paris, Texas, in 1866, where he helped to establish a girls' boarding school and the First Presbyterian Church.

This left the Goodland Mission church without an assigned pastor, but the seeds the former missionaries had planted were strong enough to endure the period of turmoil.

John P. Turnbull, an Indian Presbyterian minister, operated the church and school until 1890 when Joseph P. Gibbons was assigned to the Goodland Mission.

The dormitory was built from hand-hewn logs to house sixteen Indian boys on Goodland Mission property.

For twenty years Bacon served as superintendent of the school and during his administration four dormitories and a bath house were built.

Several Indian families deeded land to the institution during those years, and by 1920 the school owned a total of 75 acres (300,000 m2).

He is buried in the Goodland Cemetery near another early pioneer of southeastern Oklahoma — the first governor of the Choctaw Nation, Basil LeFlore.

He repaired and painted the older buildings, fireproofed the roofs, sodded the campus with grass, planted gardens and orchards, and built a poultry flock and a dairy herd.

Under the New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided funds to construct new buildings on the campus, including a grade school, a combination gym/auditorium and a hospital.