History

No Man’s Land

is unclaimed area in Oklahoma’s panhandle acted as one of the nal vestiges of the Wild West.

A man is pictured in what will become the state of Oklahoma, circa 1889. Area in the Panhandle was dubbed ‘No Mans Land’ until passage of the Organic Act in 1890, off icially declaring it part of the state’s territory. Photo courtesy the Oklahoma Historical Society The Oklahoma Panhandle may very well have been one of the last vestiges of the Wild West. e area, a strip of land bordering Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado, remained unclaimed, o cially at least, until 1890. is meant that the rules were made, broken and enforced by the residents living there at the time. And, due to popular cattle trails through the area, there were a lot of people passing through, and, eventually, some who chose to stay.

It should be noted that this part of the country was long inhabited and traversed by Indigenous people. Di erent groups moved in and out through the millennia, but by the 18th century, the area was controlled by the Comanches, with in uences from the Kiowas, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyennes and Utes. e Red River War, started in 1874, led to the forced removal of these tribes into southwestern Indian Territory.

“ ere would have been a lot of people going back and forth across [the area], on cattle trails, but there weren’t really any permanent European settlements,” says J. Seth Hammond, curator of the No Man’s Land Museum, part of the No Man’s Land Historical Society.

To begin to understand why the boundaries ended up where they did, you’d have to go all the way back to just after the colonial era in 1819 and the Adams-Onis Treaty, says Hammond. is drew the far western border at the 100° longitude line with the delineation of the U.S. and New Spain borders.

In 1850, Texas ceded a large amount of land to the U.S. government and the southern boundary of the future panhandle was drawn at 36°, 30 minutes N latitude. is was because the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slave-holding states or territories – which Texas was – north of this point. And the southern border of Kansas was drawn at 37°N in an attempt to not encroach upon Cherokee Outlet land, and due to the existence of slave-holding plantations in the area. is left a “strip” of

federal public land. “So you start to see that by this time, the early 1860s, there is this area of territory out here that no one has really claimed,” says Hammond. “As other states and territories were drawing their boundaries, what is now the Oklahoma Panhandle just kept getting left out.” Towns, such as Beaver, Hardesty and NO MAN’S Optima, began to crop up in the area LAND in the late 1880s, many of them along MUSEUM known cattle trails, says Hammond. But Located in Goodwell near no one could techniOklahoma Panhandle cally own the land, State University, the No so the term No Man’s Man’s Land Museum Land came into use strives to preserve the history of the Panhandle and surrounding areas. Visitors can learn how in the 1880s. ere were attempts to get the area recognized as its own territory – the Dust Bowl tragedy Cimarron Territory, aff ected the area, see says Hammond. But farming and ranch- there never were ing implements used enough people or through history, 19th interest to make century carpentry tools, that happen. And by as well as natural histori- 1890, with the pascal artifacts, including a collection of ancient Paleoindian points and sage of the Organic Act, the panhandle o cially became a part of Oklahoma fossils excavated by the territory. WPA in Kenton. BONNIE RUCKER