Nail's Station
a.k.a. Nail's Crossing on Blue River
2 mi. SW of Kenefick, Keneflick, OKOf the twelve stations along the 192-mile route of the Butterfield Overland Nail across Indian Territory 1858-1861, Nail's could claim one unique distinction. Aboard the first Concord to leave Fort Smith westbound Sept. 19, 1858, was Waterman L. Ormsby, a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. (He was the only through passenger on this initial st. Louis-to-San Francisco run. Of Nail's he had this to say:
Fourteen miles from Boggy Depot we came to Blue River station where a very heavy bridge is building for the company. Here I saw a copy of the Weekly Herald - a distance of six hundred miles from St. Louis, and nearly seventeen hundred from New York, overland, and twenty-five miles from any Post Office. I thought the Herald was appreciated there.
Today only piles of brick and stone mark the location of the Jonathan Nail home, which served as station. Amid the rubble stands the official Oklahoma Historical Society on-site marker. But from all accounts the house was a comfortable one in which the Herald could well have been appreciated. An ornamented picket fence enclosed the property and access from the stage road, which ran in front of the house, was gained by way of a stone stile.
The important "Nail's Crossing of the Blue" is just west of the home site, down from the higher ground on which the buildings stood. Here on the fossilized limestone bed of the stream traces of the fora used by the first Concords can still be seen. Crude bridges and ferries served travelers along this route for years after the stages ceased to run.
Jonathan Nail probably moved to this area in the early 1840s. There is a record of his building a fine sawmill and gristmill on the Blue around 1844. On Dec. 13, 1866 -- as the Choctaw Nation began to rebuild after the Civil War -- the General Council granted Nail the privilege of establishing a toll bridge at his premises on "the Boggy and Sherman Road." (When he died in March of the following year, his wife, Catherine, married David A. Folsom, who was authorized by the council to take over the toll franchise.) Local significance of the site:
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.