The Oketo Cutoff

The cutoff took its name from a Kansas crossing that took its own from an Otoe leader: Oketo, on the Big Blue in Marshall County, is named for Arkaketah, a chief of the Otoe. Holladay hired George Guittard to build the cutoff in 1862. It led to a crossing about a mile south of the present town, where J. H. Whitehead kept the station and the ferry Holladay had built. Whitehead sold out in the fall of 1864, the barn burned in the summer of 1865, and a new Oketo grew up on the railroad, incorporated in 1870.

What the plaque says

The Oketo Cutoff From October 1862 until March 1863 stagecoaches of the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express passed near here along the Oketo Cutoff. The cutoff diverged from the Ft. Leavenworth to Ft. Kearny Military Road northeast of Marysville, Kansas, angled northwest to cross the Big Blue River near Oketo, Kansas, and passed through the Otoe Indian Reservation and land that would be the short-lived village of Charleston, just south of the later site of Odell, Nebraska. The cutoff rejoined the main trail between Steele City and Diller, Nebraska. Express company owner Ben Holladay, who had the government contract to carry mail and passengers from the Missouri River to California, ordered the cutoff laid out at an estimated cost of $50,000, producing a shorter, better road and bypassing Marysville after the town refused to improve the Military Road. Although Holladay's coaches used the Oketo cutoff, freighters and other travelers continued to follow the Military Road, which had been popular since the late 1840s. After only a few months Holladay abandoned the cutoff, although the road may have seen continued use. Oketo Cutoff Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Creek Station State Historical Park — 14 mi
  A stage and Pony Express station on the trail southeast of Fairbury where James Hickok killed David McCanles in July 1861, with the court papers that cleared him, and deep wagon ruts.
• Homestead National Historical Park — 17 mi
  Daniel Freeman's claim on Cub Creek near Beatrice, one of the first filed under the Homestead Act, with a one-room school, a homesteader's cabin, restored prairie and the land's earlier owners.

More markers nearby

• 1880 Diller 1980 — 7.8 mi
• Hollenberg Ranch Pony Express Station — 10 mi
• The Oto and Missouri Agency — 13 mi
• Hollenberg Ranch and the Pony Express — 14 mi