Wagoner

The town began as a hotel at a planned railroad crossing. On June 5, 1887, Katy fireman William H. McAnally moved his family from South McAlester to build one where a Missouri Pacific branch would cross the line, and the place took its name from Wagoner's Switch, a siding for walnut logs and prairie hay named for dispatcher Henry "Big Foot" Wagoner. Indian Territory towns could incorporate at all only because an act of Congress approved May 2, 1890 adopted Arkansas statutes there. In 1897 Wagoner won the new U.S. Western District Court, and lawyers followed.

What the plaque says

Wagoner Became Indian Territory's first incorporated town Jan. 4, 1896 under Mansfield's Digest of the Laws of Arkansas. The citizens (about 2,000) sought to form a city government to provide law and order, public improvements and the upbuilding of society. Wagoner began Indian Territory's first free municipal schools in 1897. Oklahoma Historical Society Wagoner County Historical Society 226-1996

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Gibson Historic Site — 13 mi
  The army's first post in what became Oklahoma, built at Three Forks in 1824, where removed nations arrived; deeded to the Cherokee in 1857, it later housed the Dawes Commission.
• Cherokee National History Museum — 23 mi
  The Cherokee Nation's own history museum, in the brick capitol it built on Tahlequah's square after the Civil War, a short walk from its 1844 supreme court and its 1875 prison.
• Saline Courthouse Museum — 27 mi
  The one Cherokee district courthouse of nine still standing, an 1884 building near Rose that the Cherokee Nation bought back and opened as a museum in 2019.
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum — 29 mi
  The limestone memorial and museum on the Claremore hilltop Will Rogers bought for his retirement, opened on his birthday in 1938 and holding his papers, his films and his tomb.

More markers nearby

• Tullahassee Mission — 8.9 mi
• Chief Pushmataha — 8.9 mi
• Wigwam Neosho — 9.0 mi
• Tullahassee — 9.4 mi