Oklahoma Land Run: 1893 Seizes Cherokee Strip

Over 100,000 settlers lined up at the borders of the Cherokee Outlet in what is now northern Oklahoma on September 16, 1893, waiting for the signal to race in and claim land. At high noon, gunshots and bugle calls launched the largest and most chaotic land run in American history. Within hours, settlers had staked claims to approximately six million acres of what had been designated Cherokee territory. The Cherokee Outlet, often incorrectly called the Cherokee Strip, was a sixty-mile-wide band of land stretching westward from the 96th meridian. It had been assigned to the Cherokee Nation as part of the 1828 and 1835 treaties, intended as a western outlet to hunting grounds on the Great Plains. The Cherokee used the land primarily for grazing leases to Texas cattlemen, generating income for the tribe. The federal government purchased the Outlet from the Cherokee in 1891 for approximately $8.6 million, or about $1.40 per acre, under heavy political pressure from settlers who demanded the land be opened for homesteading. The price was well below market value. The land run itself was pandemonium. Participants arrived on horseback, in wagons, on bicycles, and on foot. Some traveled by specially arranged trains. "Sooners" entered the territory before the legal start time and hid until they could emerge and stake claims. The practice was so common that Oklahoma later adopted "Sooner State" as its official nickname, transforming a term for cheaters into a point of pride. Towns appeared overnight. Enid and Perry were established within hours, complete with provisional governments and property disputes. Violence broke out over contested claims. Federal marshals attempted to maintain order but were vastly outnumbered. The Cherokee Outlet land run was the last and largest of the Oklahoma land runs. It completed the transfer of Indian Territory to white settlement that had begun with the Land Run of 1889. The displacement of indigenous peoples from their legally guaranteed territories, accomplished through a combination of federal legislation, economic pressure, and raw demographic force, remains one of the defining injustices of American westward expansion.