Walker's Station

The first westbound mail reached Skullyville about daylight on Sunday, September 19, 1858, and changed horses at Governor Tandy Walker's house, the old Choctaw Agency built in 1832. Waterman Ormsby of the New York Herald wrote that the governor looked like a well-to-do farmer, owned several hundred acres and several hundred head of cattle, came out in his shirt sleeves to help hitch the team, and was favorably disposed toward the Overland Mail Company. Walker later served as colonel of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment for the Confederacy, and he died at Skullyville on February 2, 1877.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Mail Site of Walker's Station 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

• Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center — 4.3 mi
  A Mississippian ceremonial center on the Arkansas River, about 850 to 1450, whose burial mound was mined in the 1930s, now run in consultation with the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
• Sequoyah's Cabin Museum — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Skullyville — steps away
• Fort Coffee — 0.8 mi
• Battle of Backbone Mountain — 6.6 mi
• Dwight Mission — 22 mi