Volume 18 , Issue 36

All Ready! Border Scenes Indescribable, 16 Sept. 1893

It was Saturday, 16 September 1893, The Chanute Daily Tribune, out of Chanute, Kansas, reported on page 1, "All Ready." Three hundred thousand persons to make the rush. The border scenes indescribable. Great suffering at Orlando - Six deaths from prostration - More Sooners corralled in the strip.

Found on Newspapers.com

Arkansas City, Kan., Sept. 16 (1893) -- All eyes were turned toward Perry, the government county seat and land office town ten miles north of the Oklahoma line as the crow flies, or twelve miles from the little town of Orlando. The word had gone forth that this was to be the big city of the strip, where choice lots could be had for the taking, and as a result the townsite boomers were flocking to Orlando to be ready for the start at noon.

One week before the man who predicted that 100,000 would move into the Cherokee strip in search of homes was considered extravagant in his estimates. Now he who places the number at 300,000 was not thought to be wider of the mark than the prophets early in the rush. There were in and about Arkansas City 50,000 people. This county, Cowley, had a border line twenty-five miles long, and it could be said without exaggeration that there were 25,000 people in camp in the county outside of the city. West of Cowley county was Sumner county, which was thinly populated and was crowded with boomers. There were two-thirds as many boomers there as i Cowley county, so that in these two counties alone there were 125,000 people in waring to rush into the strip.

On the north and south sides of the strip the border line, 350 miles to contain the remaining 175,000 people of the 300,000 estimate.

Word received from Hunnewell the day before, in afternoon, was to the effect that the registration was about concluded there and the people were scattering to get points of vantage from which to make the start. The 100 foot strip on the border was bing rapidly filled up, the home-seekers breaking up camp along the river and creek banks and taking their places on the line. Those who had thoroughbred race horses had built sheds to protect their animals from eh heat and excitement so that they would be in the best possible condition at noon.

In the afternoon, the day before two drunken soldiers engaged in a disreputable row near booth No. 9 and one shot the other, two bullets taking effect, one in the thigh and the other in the arm. The wounds were not serious. An accidental shooting which nearly cost B. Chapman his life occurred on the railroad crossing near the booths . A homeseekers whose name could not be learned was walking across a cattle guard, when he slipped and fell. The revolver in his belt was discharged and the bullet struck Chapman in the back of the head. It did not penetrate his skull, but dug a deep furrow in his scalp.

Indescribable Scene
Guthrie, Ok., Sept. 16 (1893) -- Noon would witness the number of 140,000 people racing for homes in the strip. The borders of the strip were one seething mass of humanity. It was not stretching the facts to any extent that Orlando, Hennessy, Stillwater and the whole southern boundary of the strip presented a scene absolutely indescribable. The curse at Chicago in the palmy days of the Columbian exposition gave but a faint idea of the excitement and bustle to be seen on every acre of the southern 100 feet of neutral strip. Inspector Judge Womack and Correspondent L. G. Neblack had returned from all the towns along the strip. They said at Orlando, Hennessy, Kiowa and Stillwater more than two score of men and women were carried from he lines insensible from the effects of the heat and dust, six of whom died after a short time. The clerks at the booths were all gentlemanly and expeditious as men could be under the fearful stress, but they had no power or facilities for alleviation the suffering or lessening the hardships to which the people were necessarily exposed.

At Orlando several well-known gentlemen were robbed of their wallets, containing considerable cash, and their fine gold chronometers, which fact they did not discover for some hours afterward.

Fifty-two Sooners, with their certificates regularly issued, and their outfits were corralled in the strip the night before by the soldiers. They were coming from the northern border and stated in defense of their being found in the forbidden land that they had supposed their certificates entitled them to enter at any time.

A man named Smith, of Oklahoma City, accidentally shot himself at Orlando. The surgeon attending him said he would die. Bob Jamison, a colored cook at the Columbia restaurant, was fatally burned in this city by the explosion of a can of coal oil.
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