Natural Mound

The captain whose map named this hill went on to write the overland guidebook. Randolph Marcy, West Point class of 1832, was given command of Fort Towson in 1848 and laid out the road past here the next year. In 1852 he led the expedition that found the sources of both forks of the Red River, and his report became a classic of Western Americana. Recalled to Washington, he wrote The Prairie Traveler: A Handbook for Overland Expeditions (1859). He served as inspector general of the Army of the Potomac and retired a brigadier general in 1881.

What the plaque says

Natural Mound On the old California Road The high hill southeast, across the creek, was a well known land- mark on California Road, shown on Marcy's map, 1849, and on maps in 1853 as "Natural Mound." Known locally as "Chimney Hill." Site of U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Mound Triangulation Station est., 1920. Alt., 1,346 ft. East 1 mile (1849) was Marcy's Camp 20.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chickasaw National Recreation Area — 18 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 — 21 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 — 30 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

• Delaware Mount — 3.7 mi
• Founding of Ada, "Queen City of the Chickasaw Nation" — 6.0 mi
• Osage Village — 19 mi
• Sulphur — 19 mi