Volume 2 , Issue 8

John Culver Letter, Likes This Country Best

Letter to Editor written by John Culver, Cleo, Oklahoma and appeared in the Souvenir Edition - Alva Pioneer, Friday, Jan. 1, 1904, Vol. 11, No. 16, Alva, Woods Co., Oklahoma. W. F. Hatfield, Publisher Daily and Weekly Pioneer editor, sold the "Souvenir Edition" in 1904 for 50-Cents. It was printed to celebrate Alva's tenth anniversary since the opening of 1893. Printed as it was in 1904.

Dear Editor,

It has been just ten years since this country opened for settlement and I am one of the 40,000 that made a run for a farm. It was one of the greatest horse races I ever saw. People came in on horse-back, on the cars and on foot.

I made the race in a big wagon, with two heavy horses, which got frightened and ran away. We made the first twenty miles in one hour and twenty minutes. It was a time of great excitement and many trials and hardships. To make a long story short, I located on a homestead in the timer, got a nice farm, nice glades of prairie, and have lots of timber for firewood and posts.

Have the best water I ever drank. To commence with (with poverty staring (sic) us in the face to make a home and living for my wife and eight children, for I only had $2.50). I built a dug out first and then got a job of breaking prairie for one of my neighbors, to earn money to live on until I could break some land on my own farm. My furniture consisted of a bed, old cook stove, homemade table, and some boxes we used for chairs. But a happier family you never saw.

The country was settled with strangers, hardly two families acquainted with each other, but the best of hospitality reigned through the whole country. We began to have church services and a Sabbath school. A school meeting was called and as a result a site was chosen for a school house. We cut the logs and built a school house, and started school at once.

To give you an outline of this country will say the soil is a black sandy loam, with a clay sub-soil, about one-half timber and one-half prairie. This has proved to be a farming and fruit country. Corn does as large a yield as in some countries, but will make from 30 to 40 bushels per acre.

Wheat and oats are the best crops, taking the country over. Wheat makes from 15 to 40 bushels per acre. Oats 10 to 100 bushel. Barley 40 to 60 bushels. I have made my best money out of cotton. I have 200 acres to 300 acres in this country as easy as he can farm 80 acres in the eastern states.

The best thing about this country is health. We haven't paid out over thirty-five dollars in ten years for doctor bills. This is a good fruit country and garden truck can't be beat. This is the home of the melon, peanuts and sweet potatoes.

There has been melons raised here in Woods county that weighted fifty pounds. Sweet potatoes that weighed eight pounds we are selling on an average of $2.00 per day out of the garden. Stock does well. I sold this season $500 worth of hogs. I had to start up on a small scale, but I have sold about $2,000 worth of hogs since I commenced to raise hogs.

We live four miles east and one-half north of Cleo, a thriving town on the Choctaw railroad. Land worth now from $10 to $30 per acre. Our winters are short and the stock can winter on wheat pasture.

I was born in Ohio, moved to Indiana, then to Kansas, and then to the land of promise. I like this country better than any place I have ever seen. My farm is worth $4,000, but is not sale. We have about 600 chickens, milk from right to twelve cows, and we are now living in a log house. You will see the photograph of my house in this magazine. My advice is to people who want to change their location that they can do no better than to sell out and come to Woods county, Oklahoma.
Yours respectfully,
John Culver, Cleo, Oklahoma

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