Today’s parade and other activities in downtown Enid are the culmination of the town’s annual Cherokee Strip Days.
Many rural communities in Northwest Oklahoma—particularly in Garfield, Grant, Alfalfa, Major, and Woods Counties—celebrate in mid-September because of the opening of the Cherokee Strip aka Outlet for settlement. This great land run in 1893 by horse, buckboard, train, bike, and even foot saw aspiring farmers and entrepreneurs racing to claim a homestead in the former Indian Territory that ultimately became Oklahoma.
According to historian Glen McIntyre, the Cherokee Outlet had been set aside for Cherokees in northeast Oklahoma to hunt game on the plains. In the late 1880s, large cattle companies banded together to rent the Outlet for members of the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association. By 1893, the U.S. government agreed to buy back the Outlet from the Cherokees for $8.5M in gold, and that summer, surveyed it so as to plat 160-acre future farms for the land run on Sept. 16, 1893.
The street perimeters of the original townsite for Enid is present-day downtown Enid: Washington on the west edge, 10th on the east edge, Garriott on the south edge, and Randolph on the north edge.
A dispute over Rock Island Railroad depot sites in North Enid (established in 1889) and the newly formed Enid led to mob violence, bridge destruction, U.S. Marshals being called, and, ultimately, the U.S. Congress passing an act in Aug. 1894 that all townsites in Oklahoma Territory (O.T.) had to establish a train depot.
Settlers wanted their own town between Enid and North Enid, so tents pitched on half-acre lots between Grand on the west and 7th on the east were in Jonesville for a year before finally merging with Enid. The first original housing addition to Enid was what is now known as the Kenwood Historic District.
Racing into Northwest Oklahoma
McIntyre wrote that by the time the Cherokee Outlet opened for settlement, one-third of the territory had already been settled thanks to the three previous land runs in 1889, 1891, and 1892.
Because sooners—squatters who sneaked into the Outlet before the land run in 1893—were creating a headache for the U.S. government, settlers were required to register at booths located along the Kansas and Texas borders as well as south of the marked Outlet. There they would receive a certificate that he or she (whomever was head of household) would then present to officials at the appropriate land office when claiming stake on the property.
Unfortunately, the government’s decree backfired. There were not enough clerks to cover the multitude of applicants appearing at the Kansas booths in Kiowa, Cameron (north of present-day Manchester), Caldwell, and Hunnewell (north of present-day Nardin), or the Texas booth midway between Higgins, Texas, and Goodwin, O.T. (southwest of present-day Shattuck/northeast of Arnett), or the O.T. booths in Hennessey and Orlando.
As a result, thousands of settlers were unable to register for a certificate when the Great Land Run of 1893 rolled around, McIntyre wrote in his book “Images of America: Enid 1893-1945,” meaning sooners could claim they had waited in a booth line but didn’t receive a certificate; it is perceived that one-third of the homesteaders who filed were actually sooners.
Land offices in northwest Oklahoma Territory were located in what became the three biggest communities: Enid, Alva, and Woodward.
Enid’s land office was roughly located at the intersection of Maine and Grand between the present-day location of the Public Library of Enid and Garfield County and Garfield Furniture; the original building can be seen at Enid’s Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center in the Humphrey Heritage Village.
Starting a new life
Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907 and Enid already had 10,000 people. It became one of the wealthiest towns in the state, McIntyre wrote, thanks to the discovery of petroleum aka black gold in 1916 in the Garber-Covington oil field. As such, Champlin Petroleum founder H.H. Champlin became one of the world’s greatest producers of crude oil in the 1920s.
Meanwhile, Northwest Oklahoma outside of Garfield County was thriving at the turn of the century. Towns in the counties now known as Grant, Alfalfa, Major, and Woods burgeoned with several hundred residents along with dozens of local businesses such as hardware stores, hotels and saloons, restaurants, clothing and haberdashery shops, pharmacies, doctor offices, lawyer offices, and more.
Today most of those rural communities have dwindled to a fraction of their original size and lost most or all of their local businesses; yet many still remember their history and celebrate, including Wakita and Ames, both of which are hosting their own Cherokee Strip events today (Saturday, Sept. 13).
Wakita’s annual Old Settlers’ Celebration is in downtown Wakita; this year, Twister the Movie Museum will celebrate its 30th anniversary at the same time. The morning kicks off with the Lions Club pancake and sausage breakfast in the town gazebo at 8 a.m. Registration of attendees is open from 9:30 a.m. to noon in the Lions Club building across the street. Activities for the day include box turtle races, Oklahoma Pedal Pullers Association’s pedal pull, arts and crafts, kids’ games, vintage bingo, cornhole, a cake walk, the parade at 4 p.m., and the barbecue fundraiser supper for Medford FFA Boosters at 5 p.m. The evening concludes with Enid singer-songwriter and Red Dirt musician Robert Allen starting at 6 p.m.
Ames Day is an annual event hosted by the Ames Fire Department beginning with breakfast starting at 7 a.m. The day’s activities include bingo at 9:30 a.m., kids’ activities all afternoon including turtle races at 4 p.m., supper at 5 p.m., the auction at 7 p.m., and fireworks at dusk followed by the street dance.
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Photo courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society