Fort Coffee

The general the fort honors was Andrew Jackson's friend, business partner and kinsman by marriage, and his advance commander in the Creek War. In 1830 Jackson sent John Coffee, with Secretary of War John Eaton, to negotiate the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, by which the Choctaw ceded their homeland in Mississippi and Alabama. Coffee died at Florence, Alabama, on July 7, 1833, a year before the 7th Infantry put his name on this post. The garrison itself came at the Choctaw Nation's request, to stop whiskey and other contraband entering its new country.

What the plaque says

Fort Coffee Established June 16, 1834, by 7th Inf., and named in honor of Gen. John Coffee of Tennessee. Aban- doned by U.S. Army in November 1838. In 1842 site selected by Choctaw Council and establish- ed as Ft. Coffee Academy for boys. During Civil War buildings used as barracks by Confederate forces. In Oct. 1863 captured by Federal troops and principal buildings burned. Oklahoma Historical Society 192-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center — 5.2 mi
  A Mississippian ceremonial center on the Arkansas River, about 850 to 1450, whose burial mound was mined in the 1930s, now run in consultation with the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
• Sequoyah's Cabin Museum — 19 mi
  The log cabin near Akins where Sequoyah, who gave the Cherokee language its syllabary, settled in 1829, kept since 2016 by the Cherokee Nation inside a stone shelter of 1936.

More markers nearby

• Skullyville — 0.7 mi
• Walker's Station — 0.8 mi
• Battle of Backbone Mountain — 6.4 mi
• Dwight Mission — 22 mi