Long before Oklahoma had interstate highways, a nearly 200-mile transportation corridor through the Choctaw Nation formed part of one of America’s fastest transcontinental mail routes. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken follows the Butterfield Overland Mail from Fort Smith through southeastern Indian Territory toward the Red River. Coaches changed horses at stations every few miles, stopped at important communities including Boggy Depot and finally crossed into Texas on Benjamin Franklin Colbert’s ferry. The route was new in 1858, but many of the roads, businesses and Native communities it depended upon were not. The Butterfield story is a reminder that Indian Territory was already crossed by commerce, government, agriculture and transportation networks long before Oklahoma statehood.