The Butterfield Overland Mail Ox Bow Route Through Arkansas and Oklahoma

Book excerpt: During 2010 and 2011, writer and researcher Kirby Sanders was selected by the National Park Service to prepare a series of maps and reports outlining the routes and stations used by the iconic old west stagecoaches for the first overland transcontinental mail service from 1858 until 1861. The study was mandated by Act of the United States Congress under the Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009. Based upon over a decade of research, contained herein are those reports as supplied to the National Park Service. Part of a series that includes the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California; this volume includes both the railroad and stagecoach routes from St. Louis, Missouri into Arkansas. Original routes and modern driving equivalents are mapped and stage station locations are identified as nearly as possible by latitude and longitude. The study and these reports were designed as a field guide to facilitate further in-depth local research to establish the exact route and station locations of this historically significant but rapidly vanishing trail.