California Road

According to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, there were two trails that may have been known as the California Road at the time of the California Gold Rush. A southerly route, which ran through present-day Oklahoma (then known only as Indian Territory), along the Canadian River. A northern route was usually called the California Trail.^[1]

The California Road followed the route laid out by Captain Randolph B. Marcy escorting gold seekers during the spring of 1849. In 1850, Captain R.B. Marcy established Camp Arbuckle on the southern boundary of the Canadian River with close proximity to the 100th meridian west.^[3] The Army on the Frontier fortification served as a deterrent to the Plains Indian warfare and the safeguard of the California Road spanning Indian Territory.^[4]

The American frontier trail converged at Fort Smith where the overland trail crossed into Indian Territory and generally followed the Canadian River to the Texas Panhandle. The trail continued across the Panhandle along the Canadian into New Mexico where it met an existing trail south out of Santa Fe to El Paso and west into California. The peak number of emigrants from the eastern United States to California was about twenty thousand on this route in 1849.^[1]

The crossing of the east-west California Road with the north–south Texas Road formed a natural point of settlement in Tobucksy County of the Choctaw Nation, a site originally called Bucklucksy. James Jackson McAlester, an employee of licensed traders Reynolds and Hannaford convinced the firm to locate a general store at that location in late 1869. This settlement eventually became McAlester, Oklahoma.

Prominent landmarks in western Indian Territory were Rock Mary and the Antelope Hills.