Oklahoma City Beginnings

On the morning of April 22, 1889, Oklahoma City was a treeless prairie around a train stop.Lathered horses and multiple double-engined 24-car trains poured in all day. By night-fall, Oklahoma Station was a community of more than 10,000--a city born in a day.

Unassigned Lands

In the first land run of 1889, most of the land offered had not been assigned to any tribe. Ten years earlier in 1879, Elias C. Boudinot, a prominent mixed-blood Cherokee lawyer, discovered this fact. He created a fire storm when he published a letter urging the opening of the Unassigned Lands to non-Indians. Thought to be working with the railroads and the boomers, he was called a traitor by his people.

First Oklahoma Land Run

April 22, 1889, an estimated 50,000 pioneers crowded along the borders of the Unassigned Lands to make the first land run in Oklahoma history. The race began at high noon. They came by train, horse, buggy, and bicycle to win 160 acres of their very own.