Careening into Oklahoma

It looked like a cross between a gigantic camp meeting and the gathering of the lost tribes of Israel. First singly, then in twos and threes, finally by the trainload, land-hungry Americans gathered along the edges of a stretch of the Oklahoma Territory known as the Unassigned Lands. Through most of April 1889, soldiers patrolled the edges of the area to keep anyone from crossing into the territory prematurely.

The occasion was the opening of nearly 3,000 sq. mi. of the Oklahoma Territory to settlement. For decades, the U.S. Government had been content to use the land, which it had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, as a resettlement ground for displaced Indians. But after the Civil War, the white settlers began demanding parts of the territory. Cattlemen wanted to drive their herds to market along the Chisholm and Shawnee trails; America's new immigrants wanted land for farms. Ignoring Government restrictions, settlers known as boomers began to squat on lands in the territory.

On March 23,1889, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation stating that in one month, 1,887,796 acres, or some 4% of what eventually became Oklahoma, would be opened to settlement. Pioneers could claim 160 acres.

At noon on April 22, soldiers fired their pistols in the air, and the territory was up for grabs. Some 50,000 settlers, many galloping on horseback, others riding in wildly careening wagons, a few sprinting on foot, raced to find a good piece of land they could claim as their own. Almost everyone got something—except the Government. It had planned to charge settlers $1.25 an acre. Eleven years later, with only a fraction of the money paid, it waived the charge.