Volume 18 , Issue 37

Remembering 22 April 1889 Run, Indian Territory

We dug back through the archives in search of memories of the Indian Territory Run of 1889 (April 16). It was in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, page 1, 19 April 1889, Friday, we found this headline: "Outlook At Oklahoma City."

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory, April 18 (1889) -- This place was the government shipping point for Not Reno and the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency. There was a good sized depot, some sidetracks, sufficient to accommodate several trains, two small hotels, the post-office, and a corral. Jim McGranhan, formerly stage station keeper at Bullfoot, was postmaster until a few days before, keeping the office in his hotel. But the new administration snuffed out his official light. ON the train came postmaster Fiedler, formerly of Philadelphia, who, with assistant and clerk, at once went to work moving into the new quarters. They moved in and built the walls and roof around it - the floor was already made by nature - and thus completed the first Federal building in the possible future Capital of Oklahoma, and the first from which the sStars and Stripes has floated to the breeze. It was ten feet square.

Near Guthrie the land was a rich dark loam, with abundant grass and some timber, the surface rolling and more or less broken. Between Guthrie and Oklahoma City was a patch of rough, poor land, but again, as you near this place the land improves. Oklahoma runs in patches. No traces of boomers being in the country are to be seen, and the report of the troops that the country was thoroughly scored was undoubtedly correct.

When the train arrived in the evening it was curious sight. Today's train had on it a crew of men going to Purcell from Arkansas City to work on the railroad bridge. They thronged out on the platform, where a line of solder is was drawn up. "no one allowed to stop here unless he has authority," shouts the officer in command. A few get off, are promptly examined as to their credentials, and a few admitted.

"Everyone found here after the train starts will be arrested," shouts the sergeant. The train pulls out, leaving only those here whose business is such as is recognized and authorized. The gang of men on the train that day were going to Purcell to patch up and fill in along the railroad bridge. The big rise reported as coming reached there late Saturday, and waves four or five feet thigh came rolling down. The quicksand commenced to move near one of the piles and eight cars of stone were rushed out and dumped in. In ten minutes it was out of sight. Soundings of over 150 feet show quicksand all the way down.

Capt. Woodson of the Fifth Cavalry had a patent on crossing wide streams. He had his men cut a large number of willow stakes eight or ten feet long. Then the men strip and, wading across, set stakes at short intervals, showing the meandering line of the shallowest water. Mounting his command he marches them rapidly across six or eight times. Taking a rope a couple of hundred feet long he puts fifty or sixty men on it and snakes his wagons across without any danger of losing them. In this manner he had repeatedly crossed his command at times when it looked like madness to attempt it.

United States Marshal Jones was traveling through, scattering his deputies around where they would be of most service, preparing for the 22d of the month, when the maintenance of order would be entirely in his hands. According to present orders soldiers left Oklahoma the 22d, but imagined they would only move across the line and for the rest of the summer be kept as busy keeping people strictly within the line as they had heretofore been in keeping them out.

Settlers putting up houses should as far as possible avoid using cottonwood for pickets if they dislike bedbugs. Use oak or elm. A house built out on the prairie of cottonwood speedily becomes infested with the midnight prowlers. They seem to be indigenous to the country and cottonwood.

Fort Reno, I.T., April 18 (1889) -- A delegation from Southwestern Kansas, numbering 500 wagons, was coming doing the old Cantonment trail. After standing three failures of crops in the neutral strip and Southwest Kansas they had little money to carry them through to the coming crops. Most of them were destitute. Many of these coming settlers thought as do many int he east, in spite of repeated warnings to the contrary, that they could prove up and get a loan on their places in six months. It would take them nearly six years.

People should understand it plainly: You must live on Oklahoma land five years to get title so as to borrow money on it, unless you are a soldier. Town site companies had no ground on which to operate or set lots legally. If it was done it was done by evasion of the law and investors ran serious risks.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---