On March 23, 1889 President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed that a two million acre region in the heart of the Indian Territory was open for settlement. The land, which was previously set aside for Indian relocation, was surrounded by tribal owned land: The Cherokee Outlet on the northern Kansas border; the Iowa, Kickapoo, and Pottawattamie reservations on the east; the Chickasaw Nation on the southern border; and the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservation on the western border.
Less than a month later the largest accumulations of would-be settlers massed along the Kansas border, primarily at the railroad towns of Arkansas City and Caldwell. On April 18th the crowds at Arkansas City and Caldwell were escorted by U.S. Army troops across the Cherokee Outlet to the border of the ‘Unassigned Land.’ The Caldwell crowd was composed of 10,000 farmers, cowboys, and old soldiers in buggies, covered wagons, and on horseback. They helped one another ford the Cimarron River before making final camp at Buffalo Springs north of Kingfisher. On Easter Sunday, the day before the land rush, the camp took on a festive atmosphere; following religious services, foot races were held and baseball played.
The rail station at Guthrie and the land office at Kingfisher were two sites of choice for settlers and town site corporations. They also were the sights of choice for the Walch family. William W. Howard, writing for Harper's Weekly, followed the crowd to Guthrie:
"In some respects the recent settlement of Oklahoma was the most remarkable thing of the present century. Unlike Rome, the city at Guthrie was built in a day. To be strictly accurate in the matter, it might be said that it was built in an afternoon. At twelve o'clock on Monday, April 22nd, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken towards the formation of a municipal government. At twilight the campfires of ten thousand people gleamed on the grassy slopes of the Cimarron Valley where the night before the coyote, the gray wolf, and the deer had roamed undisturbed. Never before in the history of the West has so large a number of people been concentrated in one place in so short a time. To the conservative Eastern man, who is wont to see cities grow by decades, the settlement of Guthrie was magical beyond belief; to the quick acting resident of the West, it was merely a particular lively town-site speculation.”
“The preparations for the settlement of Oklahoma had been complete, even to the slightest detail, for weeks before the opening day. The Santa Fe Railway, which runs through Oklahoma north and south, was prepared to take any number of people from its handsome station at Arkansas City, Kansas, and to deposit them in almost any part of Oklahoma as soon as the law allowed; thousands of covered wagons were gathered on camps on all sides the new Territory waiting for the embargo to be lifted. In its picturesque aspects the rush across the border at noon on the opening day must go down in history as one of the most noteworthy events of Western civilization. At the time fixed, thousands of hungry home-seekers, who gathered from all parts of the country, particularly from Kansas and Missouri, were arranged in a line along the border, ready to lash their horses into furious speed in the race for fertile spots in the beautiful land before them. The day was one a perfect peace. Overhead the sun shone down from the sky as fair and blue as the cloudless heights of Colorado. The whole expanse of space from zenith to horizon was spotless in its blue purity. The clear spring air, through which the rolling green billows of the promised land could be seen with unusual distinctiveness for many miles, was as sweet and fresh as the balmy atmosphere of June among New Hampshire's hills.”
“As the expected home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a calvary bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the country like fiends."
All was not milk and honey when the boomers reach the promised land. Much of the land around Guthrie station was already staked out by "Sooners" which included US Marshals and railroad workers. The rules which made them ineligible for claims were simply ignored. It was fortunate that alcohol was prohibited in the new territory, said one reporter, because blood surely would have filled the newly forming streets otherwise.
John Walch may have been one of those Sooners, for after all he was a railroad man. And his brother-in-law Tom Drew in Caldwell may have used his influence to get there sooner as well. As mentioned before, William Walch later submitted a billing to the Guthrie Board of Education for his labor during the construction of its first school. It cannot be said for certain that any of the Walchs participated in the rush itself, but a year later in the First Territorial Census of Oklahoma of 1890, Thomas Drew and James Walch were property owners in Hennessey of Logan County and in Guthrie of Logan County, respectively. As claimants under the 1862 Homestead Act they could have been granted title up to 160 acres of public land if they remain on it, “improved” and developed it for five years. They most likely kept their primary residencies in Caldwell and Winfield, and stayed on their claim land to meet minimum residency requirements. Although in the case of Tom Drew, he may have made a longer commitment to the claim because his two sons eventually operated general stores in the towns immediate north and south of Hennessey - which we will turn our attention to in a future blog.
For William W. Howard’s full article in Harper's Weekly, (18 May 1889), go to www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/landrush.htm
Less than a month later the largest accumulations of would-be settlers massed along the Kansas border, primarily at the railroad towns of Arkansas City and Caldwell. On April 18th the crowds at Arkansas City and Caldwell were escorted by U.S. Army troops across the Cherokee Outlet to the border of the ‘Unassigned Land.’ The Caldwell crowd was composed of 10,000 farmers, cowboys, and old soldiers in buggies, covered wagons, and on horseback. They helped one another ford the Cimarron River before making final camp at Buffalo Springs north of Kingfisher. On Easter Sunday, the day before the land rush, the camp took on a festive atmosphere; following religious services, foot races were held and baseball played.
The rail station at Guthrie and the land office at Kingfisher were two sites of choice for settlers and town site corporations. They also were the sights of choice for the Walch family. William W. Howard, writing for Harper's Weekly, followed the crowd to Guthrie:
"In some respects the recent settlement of Oklahoma was the most remarkable thing of the present century. Unlike Rome, the city at Guthrie was built in a day. To be strictly accurate in the matter, it might be said that it was built in an afternoon. At twelve o'clock on Monday, April 22nd, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken towards the formation of a municipal government. At twilight the campfires of ten thousand people gleamed on the grassy slopes of the Cimarron Valley where the night before the coyote, the gray wolf, and the deer had roamed undisturbed. Never before in the history of the West has so large a number of people been concentrated in one place in so short a time. To the conservative Eastern man, who is wont to see cities grow by decades, the settlement of Guthrie was magical beyond belief; to the quick acting resident of the West, it was merely a particular lively town-site speculation.”
“The preparations for the settlement of Oklahoma had been complete, even to the slightest detail, for weeks before the opening day. The Santa Fe Railway, which runs through Oklahoma north and south, was prepared to take any number of people from its handsome station at Arkansas City, Kansas, and to deposit them in almost any part of Oklahoma as soon as the law allowed; thousands of covered wagons were gathered on camps on all sides the new Territory waiting for the embargo to be lifted. In its picturesque aspects the rush across the border at noon on the opening day must go down in history as one of the most noteworthy events of Western civilization. At the time fixed, thousands of hungry home-seekers, who gathered from all parts of the country, particularly from Kansas and Missouri, were arranged in a line along the border, ready to lash their horses into furious speed in the race for fertile spots in the beautiful land before them. The day was one a perfect peace. Overhead the sun shone down from the sky as fair and blue as the cloudless heights of Colorado. The whole expanse of space from zenith to horizon was spotless in its blue purity. The clear spring air, through which the rolling green billows of the promised land could be seen with unusual distinctiveness for many miles, was as sweet and fresh as the balmy atmosphere of June among New Hampshire's hills.”
“As the expected home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a calvary bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the country like fiends."
All was not milk and honey when the boomers reach the promised land. Much of the land around Guthrie station was already staked out by "Sooners" which included US Marshals and railroad workers. The rules which made them ineligible for claims were simply ignored. It was fortunate that alcohol was prohibited in the new territory, said one reporter, because blood surely would have filled the newly forming streets otherwise.
John Walch may have been one of those Sooners, for after all he was a railroad man. And his brother-in-law Tom Drew in Caldwell may have used his influence to get there sooner as well. As mentioned before, William Walch later submitted a billing to the Guthrie Board of Education for his labor during the construction of its first school. It cannot be said for certain that any of the Walchs participated in the rush itself, but a year later in the First Territorial Census of Oklahoma of 1890, Thomas Drew and James Walch were property owners in Hennessey of Logan County and in Guthrie of Logan County, respectively. As claimants under the 1862 Homestead Act they could have been granted title up to 160 acres of public land if they remain on it, “improved” and developed it for five years. They most likely kept their primary residencies in Caldwell and Winfield, and stayed on their claim land to meet minimum residency requirements. Although in the case of Tom Drew, he may have made a longer commitment to the claim because his two sons eventually operated general stores in the towns immediate north and south of Hennessey - which we will turn our attention to in a future blog.
For William W. Howard’s full article in Harper's Weekly, (18 May 1889), go to www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/landrush.htm
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