WITH A SIX-GUN ON HIS hip and a Winchester pump-gun in his hands, the young cowpuncher faced another claim-jumper. They had reached the ground together, blustered the second man. He demanded an even split of the lush grassy quarter-section on which they stood, he to get the larger parcel, the youngster, of course, to have the smaller.

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The boy stood his ground. ‘A hundred and sixty acres or six feet,’ he said, ‘and I don’t give a damn which it is…’ The boy–and his Winchester–made his point, and the kid held his own piece of the new Eden in the wildest, the biggest, rush for new land in U.S. history.

It began April 22, 1889, a perfect spring day–bright, balmy and cloudless. The Oklahoma prairie was green with the new year, a little glimpse of paradise to the thousands of land-starved pioneers.

Along the borders of the Indian Territory’s so-called Unassigned Lands seethed a hive of excited people, waiting impatiently, praying, quarreling, jostling for position. They had eyes only for the great prize before them: 160 acres of government land, free to whomever first staked a claim…and could hold it. They waited in wagons and buggies of every kind, on horseback, even on foot. The able-bodied waited next to the blind, the old and the sick. The rushers were black and white, native and immigrant.

For some it was purely a chance at profit, a chance to seize prime land and sell it later. For others, it was the chance of a lifetime, perhaps the last chance to find a home. For many, especially the young men, it was a chance for adventure.

For more than a few it was a chance to rob and steal, to bully weaker people. Against these vultures the rushers relied mostly on their Colts and Winchesters, for the law was spread very thin in the Unassigned Lands. Even God-fearing, honest people oiled and checked their weapons. The Ten Commandments had little force between the North and South Forks of the Canadian; a bullet was surer by far.

The explosive opening of the Unassigned Lands had been a long time coming. This broad, fertile country had been promised to the Indian by treaty, ‘…as long as the grass grows or the water runs…’ But as America drove West after the Civil War, the pioneers coveted these same green, empty lands, and a bill appeared in Congress annually from 1884 on, designed to permit opening of the wide-open Indian Territory to public settlement.

For a time, the Cherokees and other tribes successfully held off all attempts to open their land, but in the end the pressure was too strong. Ironically, a Cherokee lawyer and Confederate veteran, Colonel E.C. Boudinot, was one of the first to urge opening of the two million acres of prime land left unassigned by the 1866 treaties.

The agitation increased, in and out of Congress. In addition to continuing attempts to legislate free settlement of the Unassigned Lands, a settlement movement grew up in Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Arkansas. The Boomers, as members of this movement were called, bombarded Congress with repeated appeals to open Oklahoma, especially after the Santa Fe built its railroad line straight across the coveted ground, from Arkansas City, Kans., to Gainsville, Texas.

When Congress did not act, parties of Boomers tried again and again to move into the Unassigned Lands–dugouts and shanties began to appear across the lush prairie. They did not stay. The long-suffering U.S. Cavalry evicted them as often as they settled, burning their fragile buildings, and on occasion the confrontations came perilously close to shooting.

The Boomers were persistent, returning as often as the tiny units of blue-shined soldiers threw them out. By March of 1889 a substantial group had settled on the railroad around Oklahoma Station, the site of present-day Oklahoma City. Repeated evictions here led to scuffles and violence, settled by the soldiers with carbine and pistol butt. In spite of all the soldiers could do, many Boomers simply scattered and hid until the Army left. Oklahoma station, and a dozen other scruffy little settlements, were founded to stay.

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