Many Mysterious Murders Make Men Fear "Dead
Man's Gulch" on Old Atoka Trail
Article in Daily Oklahoman on August 17, 1907
Submitted and Transcribed by Linda Craig
Special to The Oklahoman
Atoka, Indian Territory, Aug 16--No man ever has traveled from Atoka to Bobby Depot, twelve miles distant, without
getting that "creepy" feeling when he crossed Sandy Creek, three miles out from Atoka on the old trail.
This lonely spot, with its deathly stillness during the day, and the weird call of the screech owl and the yelping
coyote at night, will occupy a place in the history of Indian Territory as the scene of more mysterious murders
than any other one spot in its borders.
Atoka is one of the oldest towns in the Choctaw nation, and Boggy Depot is another, and in the early days the trail
between the two towns was much frequented. Long ago the crossing at Sandy Creek took the name "Dead
Man's Gulch", and to this day no native of that section will make that crossing after nightfall unless forced
to do so. They will go miles out of the way to avoid it.
Nearly 40 years ago the bodies of two men were found at this spot. They had been murdered. No one ever
identified them, and no one ever found out who killed them or why. It was then the name "Dead Man's
Gulch" was first heard. A few years later the stage driver who carried mail from Atoka over the trail
to Boggy Depot, was murdered and his body found in exactly the same spot where the other two had been found.
Quantrell, during the war, passed this spot and left his mark upon it. He had found in the Choctaw nation
five men who were working among the Choctaws trying to get recruits for the northern army. These men had
come among the Indians as traders and were not generally known to be representative of the northern army.
They ingratlated themselves in the good will of the neighboring Indians and then incited them to join the Union
army if possible. When Quantrell got on the trail of these five men he scoured the country over for them.
They were chased across the Choctaw nation, took refuge in the Winding Stair mountains, were driven back westward
and tried to get into the Arbuckle mountains in the Chickasaw nation, but were intercepted at Limestone Gap, by
a squad of Auantrell's men led by a Choctaw Indian. These five men were brought up on the trail and hanged
at the crossing at Sandy Creek, together with one of Quantrell's own men who had disobeyed orders in the treatment
of Indians. The bodies swung in the breezes for many days, until they fell to the ground of their own weight,
and it was difficult for a long time to get anyone to travel that way, even in the daytime.
Immediately after the Civil War, a stage coach with a lot of money designed to pay government troops then stationed
near Boggy Depot, was held up and robbed, and the government money, as well as all of the money and valuables of
the passengers was taken. The bandits stood under a big elm tree and with their Winchesters leveled at the
stage, ordered the driver to proceed.
Twenty years later three men, travelling in a light spring wagon and driving a spendid team of horses, stopped
and camped for the night under the old elm tree. It was the first time since Quantrall had hanged his men
that any one was ever known to have stopped over night there. The next morning the party was gone but there
had been strange proceedings during the night.
The men had measured off a distance of 150 feet from the tree and set a circle of stakes around it in a perfect
circle. It was evident that they had used a tape line for the measurements. And where they had set
their stakes they had dug into the ground. At the end of one of the lines their search had evidently been
rewarded for in the bottom of the hole was plainly seen the imprint of a large pot, with toes on the bottom, large
enough to hold at least five gallons. The pot had been broken and whatever it contained had been carried
away. There was no more digging after the pot was found and the remainder of the stakes were left where they
had been driven. There are men living in Atoka today who remember this incident. The three men disappeared
from the nighborhood as mysteriously as they had come and were never heard of again.
The remarkable feature about the place is that all the tragedies have occured in the same spot, and there has never
been a single one solved.
The mysterious place guards its bloody tales well.