The Land Rush in Oklahoma
The history of Oklahoma contains two of the most fascinating episodes in the Westward Movement. These were the land rushes of 1889 and 1893, when the government threw open several million acres of land to settlers on a first-come, first-served basis. The opening of these tracts came at a time when choice land throughout the plains states already had been taken up, and because the openings were well publicized throughout the country, the competition for farms and town lots was tremendous. In the following report Hamilton Wicks describes the boom psychology and his own part in the race for free land in 1889. Guthrie, Oklahoma, where Wicks claimed a town lot, was on the route of the Henry Ellsworth and Washington Irving expedition in 1832.