Middle Boggy Battlefield Site and Confederate Cemetery
1 mi. N of Atoka, Atoka, OKThe Middle Boggy Battle was fought near the stream of that name-- in present Atoka County--on February 18, 1864. The fierce skirmish, to quote Oklahoma's official Historic Sites Survey and Preservation Plan, "is noteworthy for marking the farthest drive towards Texas of the Union forces in the Civil War. Although the engagement was indecisive, Union troops did not attempt to move farther south; thus the site is the high-water mark of northern penetration of Indian Territory."
Confederate forces included Lt. Col. John Jumper's Seminole Battalion, Capt. Adam Nail's Co. A of the First Choctaw-and-Chicka saw Cavalry, and a detachment of the 20th Texas Regiment, Union forces, under the command of Col. William A. Phillips, commanding officer at Fort Gibson, included three companies-of-the-Fourteenth Kansas Cavalry under Maj. Charles Willette and a section of howitzers under Capt. Solomon Kaufman. Surprised and poorly armed, the Southerners made a firm stand while losing 47 men killed. (No injuries were reported among the Union cavalrymen:) They were saved from a more serious defeat when the report of reinforcements moving up_from_Boggy_Depot_to_the_southwest caused Col. Phillips to break contact and return to Fort Gibson.
This was the last invasion of Confederate-held Indian Territory, as well as the 'Union's deepest penetration of the area. Confederate forces would probe north of the Arkansas River later in 1864, after which both sides resorted only to guerrilla tactics for the duration of the war.
Though the site's chief claim to historic note came on a single bloody day, its position of the road to Boggy Depot made it well known before and after the war, Crossing this area were the famed Texas Road (primary transportation and communications link between Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas) and the route of the Butterfield stages between St. Louis and San Francisco. Early in the winter of 1862, during the movement of Confederate Indian troops north for service in Missouri and Arkansas, Choctaw and Chickasaw regiments camped here along the Middle Boggy. From this time on the area was known as a Confederate encampment, occupied periodically. by various, units of Indian forces and Texas_cavalry. Late in the war it served as an outpost guarding Boggy Depot, by then the main Confederate commissary in Indian Territory.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.