Nail's Crossing

The stand took its name from its keeper, Joel H. Nail, and was also called Blue River station. An early account reads: 'Fourteen miles from Boggy Depot we came to Blue River station, where a heavy bridge is building for the company.' The crossing mattered again four years later, when Albert Pike put Fort McCulloch on a bluff just west of the river here. In 2011 an HMdb contributor photographed the site of the old bridge and the remains of a hotel cellar near the plaque, which stands on private land out of sight of the road.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Mail Site of Nail's Crossing Here was located a stage stand of the Butterfield Overland Mail route, under act of Congress, March 3, 1857. First mail stage arrived here in September, 1858, enroute to San Francisco. Service continued until the outbreak of the War Between the States. Oklahoma Historical Society, 1958

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Choctaw Cultural Center — 12 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.
• Chickasaw National Capitol — 18 mi
  The red granite capitol the Chickasaw Nation finished at Tishomingo in 1898, forced out of at statehood, used as the county courthouse for most of a century and reclaimed by the Nation in 1992.

More markers nearby

• Fort McCulloch — 1.5 mi
• General Douglas Hancock Cooper — 9.1 mi
• Fort Washita — 9.1 mi
• Durant — 9.5 mi