1893 - Cherokee Strip Thickly Populated Territory At Long Last
At 12 o'clock, September 16, 1893, Saturday Kansas and Oklahoma tipped up simultaneously and spilled a large per cent of their population on to the Cherokee Strip.
Found on Newspapers.com
The event that thousands awaited with impatience occurred and the Cherokee Strip as a settled territory, and before the cloud of dust raised by the boomers had settled the settlers begun to think of statehood. The heaviest rush was from Arkansas City, Orlando and Hennessey. Everyone who went in after a piece of land got it, but 75% of those who went after town lots were left. The plebian touched elbows with the plutocrat in the maddest rush ever witnessed.
Of course, there were many serious accidents, but the area wonder was that the fatalities were not greater. Men and women took risks which under other circumstances they could not be tempted to try for ten times the fancied gain.
The Cherokee Strip, comprised 6,3888,950 acres, lay to the Northwest corner of the Indian Territory. Its northern boundary was the southern line of Kansas, and its southern boundary parallels its northern line, giving it a width of 57 miles and a length vaping from 167 to 210 miles.
The extent of the tract was not easily comprehended without comparison. It was equal to the combined area of two Rhode Islands, Delaware and Connecticut, with 167 square miles to spare. It became a part of Oklahoma Territory when the President issued his proclamation three weeks before, and was now under its laws. It made Oklahoma'a area 39,303 square miles' and raised that territory to the dignity of being larger than twelve different states of the Union.
With the home seekers who added themselves to Oklahoma's population that Saturday, that territory had good reason to demand admission to the sisterhood of states, which demand was then being pressed upon congress by Delegate Flynn.
The prices set upon the various portions of the land made a very good index of its worth. The extreme eastern portion of the Strip would come in at a cost to the settler at $2.50 per acre, the middle portion $1.50, and all west of that $1. The extreme eastern part contained the most valuable land. It was good rich farming land. It was well watered and fairly well timbered. The middle division was fair land, but south of the Arkansas River there was a scarcity of water. The western division was good for little but cattle grazing. It partook of the character of the Texas Panhandle and southwestern Kansas, though some of it was very fine and would prove productive.
The Cherokee Strip was watered by the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers, several smaller streams and many creeks. The settlers would not lack transportation facilities. The Santa Fe had two lines through the country, one passing through directly south from Arkansas City and the other diagonally from Kiowa to the Southwest corner. Between the Santa Fe's lines the Rock Island passed through from Caldwell, Kansas, in a north and south line.
The country had been divided into seven counties: K, L, M, N, O, P and Q. Each county had been provided by the government with county seat and by speculative townsites with various prospective towns. The governor of Oklahoma had appointed the county officers, and the settlers would soon be provided with the political and legal machinery necessary for government. From a barren waste, the resort of the fugitives from justice and rendezvous of desperadoes, where train robberies had been planned and executed, whence marauding parties had gone forth to raid banks, and the hers of cattle, the home of the Daltons, starts and numerous other gangs, the Strip would shortly be transformed into a populous, peaceful, ambitious, thrifty community.
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