Based on his description we've located it in Google maps and satellite view... which of course led to still more questions, and we're deliberating trying to contact a grandson of R. L. who grew up there to ask him.
We live in strange times, and... bizarre as it may seem... there is currently a Youtube video ( slideshow) up of the ranch that occupies the site (it's for sale).
Bet you didn't see that coming. ;) How often are you researching events of 170+ years ago and find a Youtube video?
It is not at all like the forbidding impression I grew up with from having been exposed to the Grant Foreman grainy black-and-white photos, in fact, it's sort of gorgeous territory (outside shots are mostly in the second half of the slideshow). Knowing that the video is not going to be up forever I located the real estate office's website and found higher-resolution photos I could download, it's probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The second photo is the view from the front of the house. About twice as far as the fence you can see a row of trees that look like they were planted to mask the road. We're relatively certain that the salt well is pretty immediately on the far side of that road.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy4Mc588BiI
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Here's something I just came across... nothing conclusive, certainly, but more background info that I had read before. I'll limit my comments to the one section preceded by my initials - RTW. The rest is from the site.
From: www.anpa.ualr.edu/digital_library/CHPRoss.html
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Hanging Tree
10Interview with S. W. Ross
Hattie Turner, Interviewer, Wagoner, Oklahoma
Park Hill, Oklahoma, April 9, 1938
Taken from the Indian-Pioneer History Collection, Grant Foreman, editor
The first legal execution in the present Oklahoma occurred at the beginning of 1841. In lieu of a gallows the limb of a big tree was utilized and in consequence became known at the "hanging tree." Superstitious persons feared to pass near the tree after night fall, declaring that ghostly forms could be seen. Several persons were executed at or in the vicinity of the old tree in following years, but in course of time, about the beginning of the 1850s, the place of execution was removed to a ravine nearly southeast of the present Cherokee County Court House. A regulation scaffold was built in the ravine and several men were hanged there before the beginning of the Civil War period. The spot on which stood the old hanging tree of 1841 was "down on the Tahlequah Branch," in the vicinity of the present barn which stands east of the residence of the Superintendent of the Tahlequah Fish Hatchery. In the early days of Tahlequah the court terms were held in a log building on the same square where now stands the old brick building, once the capitol.
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Tahlequah during its seventy years' existence as capital of the Cherokee Nation has often been the scene of events historic, romantic and pathetic.
Here occurred the first legal hanging in the Cherokee country. In the early forties a citizen, who bore the not uncommon name of Smith, committed a crime which called for the infliction of the death penalty. Sentence having been passed, there was no delay in carrying out the mandate of the court.
As the Cherokee capital owned no gallows, the wagon with the condemned man seated therein was driven beneath a large oak tree on the outskirts of the village. The rope was placed about the offender's neck, the other end thrown over the limb, make fast, and then the team of horses attached to the wagon were driven away, and the condemned man left dangling at the rope's end.
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( RTW - How curious that the writer, one S. W. Ross, chooses to emphasize that the victim bore the "not uncommon name of Smith" when he also bore the very uncommon name of "Archilla". You have to wonder...)
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Judge David Carter
Elizabeth Ross, Investigator
Interview with S.W. Ross
Park Hill, Oklahoma
November 1, 1937
Taken from the Indian-Pioneer History Collection, Grant Foreman, editor
In a neglected spot in an old field approximately one mile south of Tahlequah is the grave of Judge David Carter, a man of prominence in the early period of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory.
Concerning David Carter there has been related an account which says that his father, Nathan Carter, a white man, was captured when a boy by Indian warriors at the time of the Wyoming Valley Massacre in Pennsylvania in 1778. Eventually the boy was carried to the Cherokee country and grew up among these people. As it was Nathan Carter married a woman of the Cherokees and spent his lifetime in their midst.
David Carter, born in the original Cherokee country east of the Mississippi River in the year 1802, attended school for awhile in the institution established in 1817 at Cornwall, Connecticut, by the American Board of Boston, Massachusetts. The institution was maintained for the exclusive benefit of Indian youths. Besides David Carter, there were several other Cherokees who were enrolled at the school.
Upon removing to the Indian Territory in 1838, David Carter established his home in the Tahlequah district, near the road leading south from Tahlequah to Park Hill. There he lived until during a portion of the Civil War period, when he removed to another and distant section as a matter of safety, returning to his home upon the return of peace. Here he continued to live until the 1st day of February, 1867, when he died and was buried in near vicinity of his late home. One month later, March 1st, he was followed in death by his wife.
In 1840, David Carter served as clerk of the court at the time the first murder case in the present state of Oklahoma was tried under the laws of the Cherokee Nation. In following years he held several important official positions. He was superintendent of Cherokee National schools, associate justice of the Cherokee supreme court, chief justice of that court, editor of the national newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate, and delegate to Washington (appointed by the Cherokee Council). He was a member of the Cherokee Lodge of Masons at Tahlequah, and a leading member of the Methodist Church, a near neighbor being the Reverend Thomas Bertholf, who built historic Riley's Chapel (two miles south of Tahlequah).
Ben W. Carter, oldest son of Judge and Mrs. David Carter was a member of the first class graduated from the Cherokee National Male Seminary in the fifties of the last [nineteenth] century, and father of Representative Charles D. Carter, who served for twenty years as a member of Congress from Oklahoma.
All members of the family of Judge David Carter lived in places remote from the old home and after the death of Judge Carter and his wife the house and adjacent land fell into other hands. The original home was demolished a number of years ago.
The burial spot is east of where the large old-fashioned family residence once stood, but few of the people who pass along the roadway know that the small marble headstone marks the final resting place of one of the notable men of the old Cherokee Nation. Unless the graves of Judge Carter and his wife are protected by a substantial fence of iron, or wall of stone, they must in the course of not distant years become entirely obliterated.
The labors and influence of Judge Carter in the pioneer days was of great value in the progress of the Cherokee in their new home in Indian Territory.