The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

CAMP ARBUCKLE.

Three military posts in pre-Civil War Oklahoma were named for Gen. Matthew Arbuckle (1778–1851), an important U.S. Army commander in Indian Territory from the 1820s through the 1840s. In 1832 ranger companies under Capts. Nathan Boone and Lemuel Ford established a Camp Arbuckle on the west bank of the Grand (Neosho) River, some two miles south of Fort Gibson. The installation was short lived.

In June 1834 a second Camp Arbuckle was built at the confluence of the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers. Sometimes called Fort Arbuckle, it was constructed under orders of Brig. Gen. Henry Leavenworth as a forward base for the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition. Located west of present Sand Springs in Tulsa County, the 1834 Camp/Fort Arbuckle Site is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NR 78002269).

The third and most important Camp Arbuckle was established by Company D of the Fifth Infantry, Capt. Randolph B. Marcy commanding, in spring 1850. Marcy was ordered to build a fortification to protect the California Road. After marching some seventy miles from Fort Washita, he selected a site for the outpost on August 22, 1850, and his men erected barracks and officers’ huts. The 1850 Camp Arbuckle was located just south of the Canadian River, one mile northwest of present Byars in McClain County. Proving unacceptable, the site was abandoned in April 1851. The troops moved south to a site near along Wild Horse Creek near present Hoover, in Garvin County, where they constructed another Camp Arbuckle. It was soon officially designated Fort Arbuckle. No ruins remain. The 1851 Fort Arbuckle Site is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NR 72001064).

The 1850 site in McClain County continued to be occupied for several years. Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple visited it, by then known as Beaversville (named for Black Beaver), in August 1853. His party was conducting a transcontinental railroad survey and spent four days there, resting and making repairs. Heinrich Balduin Möllhausen, the expedition topographer and artist, drew the only image of the 1850 settlement known to exist. The Delaware vacated Beaversville prior to the Civil War.

Jon D. May