Tamaha Jail and Ferry Landing

Tamaha is Choctaw for town, and until the post office came in 1884 the place was called Pleasant Bluff, after a nearby creek. A bank, a hotel and its own newspaper arrived only around 1900, and by 1920 it counted 501 people. Fire undid it: one blaze in 1919, then in September 1930 another that destroyed nearly every business. The general store's owner vowed to rebuild, but no one else did, and many families moved to Stigler. The post office closed in 1954, and the jail and ferry landing are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

What the plaque says

Tamaha Jail and Ferry Landing One of earliest port towns and trading centers in Choctaw Nation, I.T. Choctaws brought from Mississippi up Arkansas River to Tamaha on steamboats as early as 1831. Tamaha devel- oped as port and ferry cross- ing around 1836. Post office built 1884 and jail in 1886. Last steamboat landed in 1912, 3 mi east of Stigler, SH 9. Oklahoma Historical Society 70-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Robbers Cave State Park — 26 mi
  A sandstone cave in the Sans Bois Mountains north of Wilburton, wrapped in outlaw stories, and the park that Boy Scouts, prison labor and the CCC built around it.
• Sequoyah's Cabin Museum — 29 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.
• Honey Springs Battlefield — 30 mi
  The July 17, 1863 battlefield on the Texas Road, the largest fight in Indian Territory, where Cherokee and Muscogee regiments fought on both sides and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry held.

More markers nearby

• Battle of the J.R. Williams — steps away
• Dwight Mission — 17 mi
• Tahlonteeskee — 17 mi
• Webbers Falls — 18 mi