Road and there, from the county highway, in the history of Oklahoma and other the Colbert family cemetery is visible. sections of the Southwest, there still The pilings of a toll bridge established lingers something of the spirit of Indian later at the ferry site can be viewed from Territory days.” the U.S. Highway 69 bridge across the Although no longer a continuous, Red River. discrete pathway, the road abides With the coming of the railroad to nonetheless, and something of that Indian Territory in 1872, many of the same spirit of Indian Territory days does villages along the Butter昀椀eld road fell on indeed still linger. Faded scars on the hard times and dwindled away, bypassed land remain: a swale through a pasture, as new communities sprang up nearer a cutdown creek bank, a path worn bare the railroad. As a consequence, many through the forest. In forgotten places, road swales, old wells, springs, and other A stretch of the stone-lined wells still stand near the physical remnants of the trail’s existence Bu琀琀er昀椀eld road is rubble of rock buildings and graveyards have been preserved away from major memorialized at the of broken tombstones. But with each roads. Along the old mail route, the Atoka County Museum. passing year, these few tangible remains preponderance of unpaved byways of the Butter昀椀eld crumble and disappear. passing through sparsely populated farm Even the 1958 concrete and bronze and ranchland lends an air of remoteness markers are deteriorating. This portal to which prompts the imagination to wander a different time is closing in a physical back through time, contemplating sense, disintegrating as earthly things do. the experience of earlier travelers. As Fort Washita, But the story of Oklahoma’s Butter昀椀eld Muriel Wright wrote in 1933, “For one established 1842, Trail offers a journey through time back who will follow the traces of the old was an important to Indian Territory’s antebellum days, as stage line road from Fort Smith to Red stop adjacent to the concrete and steel dissolve into wagon River, bearing in mind the part it had Bu琀琀er昀椀eld trail. ruts, hewn logs, and 昀氀owing springs. 29