As a native Oklahoman, I remember celebrating the Land Run each year in elementary school. I remember getting to dress up in my pioneer clothes, decorating covered wagons, and playing “pioneer” for the entire afternoon. Now, it is so much fun to watch my big guy do the same thing. It is still a little strange that here in OKC we celebrate the 1889 Land Run, which happened in the spring. I am used to imagining the Land Run in the fall which is what we celebrate in the Cherokee Strip. All in all, it makes me nostalgic and feel a little OLD!
This is his “tough face”. *Note: He picked out his own clothes based on what he learned in school.
In some respects the recent settlement of Oklahoma was the most remarkable thing of the present century. Unlike Rome, the city of 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 22d, 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 toward the formation of a municipal government. At twilight the camp-fires 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 particularly lively town-site speculation. Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889
