Delaware Mount

The word Delaware in this plateau's name is itself English. Captain Samuel Argall named a bay for Lord De la Warr in 1610, and the name passed to the river and its people, who called themselves Lenape, usually rendered original or true people. Three centuries of coerced moves followed. One band split off in Indiana in 1789 and another in Kansas in the early 1830s; they went through Missouri, Louisiana and Texas and were forced north into western Oklahoma, sharing a reservation with the Caddo and Wichita until 1906. In 1999 they became the Delaware Nation, based at Anadarko.

What the plaque says

Delaware Mount On the old California Road The California Road, in 1849- 1853, ascended the escarpment, about 3/4 mile east, known to travelers as "Delaware Mount." This "Mount" extends from several miles south of here, northeast to the Canadian River. At top of this plateau, travelers exclaimed on the fine view of headwaters of Muddy and Clear Boggy creeks.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chickasaw National Recreation Area — 22 mi
  Springs the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations sold to the government in 1902 rather than lose them to developers, later Platt National Park, now the Travertine district's creeks, CCC stonework and bison pasture.
• Chickasaw Cultural Center — 24 mi
  The Chickasaw Nation's 184-acre campus at Sulphur, opened in 2010, with an exhibit hall on the Nation's history, a recreated 1700s town with daily stomp dance, and a bridge into the national recreation area.
• Turner Falls Park — 34 mi
  Honey Creek dropping 77 feet over Arbuckle rock into a swimming hole off I-35, in a 1,500-acre city park named for the man who settled here with his Chickasaw wife.

More markers nearby

• Founding of Ada, "Queen City of the Chickasaw Nation" — 2.3 mi
• Natural Mound — 3.7 mi
• Osage Village — 16 mi
• Sasakwa — 16 mi