BACKGROUND Patients with Ewing sarcoma require local primary tumor control with surgery, radiation, or both. The optimal choice of local control for overall and local disease control remains unclear. METHODS Patients with localized Ewing sarcoma of bone who were treated on 3 consecutive protocols with standard‐dose, 5‐drug chemotherapy every 3 weeks were included (n=465). Propensity scores were used to control for differences between local control groups by constructing multivariate models to assess the impact of local control type on clinical endpoints (event‐free survival EFS, overall survival, local failure, and distant failure) independent of differences in their propensity to receive each local control type. RESULTS Patients who underwent surgery were younger (P=.02) and had more appendicular tumors (P<.001). Compared with surgery, radiation had higher unadjusted risks of any event (hazard ratio HR, 1.70; 95% confidence interval CI, 1.18‐2.44), death (HR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.18‐2.85), and local failure (HR, 2.57; 95% CI, 1.37‐4.83). On multivariate analysis, compared with surgery, radiation had a higher risk of local failure (HR, 2.41; 95% CI, 1.24‐4.68), although there were no significant differences in EFS (HR, 1.42; 95% CI, 0.94‐2.14), overall survival (HR, 1.37; 95% CI, 0.83‐2.26), or distant failure (HR, 1.13; 95% CI, 0.70‐1.84) between local control groups. CONCLUSIONS In this large group of similarly treated patients, choice of the mode of local control was not related significantly to EFS, overall survival, or distant failure, although the risk of local failure was greater for radiation compared with surgery. These data support surgical resection when appropriate, whereas radiotherapy remains a reasonable alternative in selected patients. Cancer 2015;121:467–475. © 2014 American Cancer Society. Patient characteristics differ according to the chosen mode of local control in Ewing sarcoma. Accounting for these differences, patients who are selected for definitive radiotherapy have higher rates of local failure but no differences in event‐free or overall survival compared with patients who are selected for definitive surgery.