How a land-rush stampede created the Sooner State.

These days, we’re all pretty familiar with the layout of the continental United States. But for several decades, America had an odd blank spot in the middle of it. This gap arose not out of some grand design, but brute convenience. And its eventual filling managed to be both completely unbelievable and totally obvious at the same time.

Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as European settlers pressed further inland, the U.S. government systematically pushed indigenous peoples into a parcel of land in the country’s center that shrunk with every passing decade. After the Civil War, the feds decided to permanently seize a large portion of what was collectively known as “Indian Territory” from the resident Creek and Seminole Indians. By the 1880s, this now-vacated area of approximately two million acres had a new name: the Unassigned Lands. But the territory wouldn’t stay claim-free for long.

Settlers from all sides eyed the Unassigned Lands with unabashed lust. They lobbied Congress, made a stink in the newspapers, and tried every other legal trick they could think of. Then there were the illegal tricks. Groups of “Boomers” made repeated incursions into the territory, anxious to start building the city of their dreams. (When discovered, Boomers were arrested and sent back to Kansas.) After all, the Unassigned Lands were the last piece of America that had yet to be divvied up. It was obvious to everyone involved how much money stood to be made, if you could just be in the right place at the right time.

The right time turned out to be noon on April 22, 1889. At that pre-ordained moment, the United States government would officially open up the Unassigned Lands to the general public. The ensuing hysteria, writes Sam Anderson in his excellent 2018 book Boom Town, “spread worldwide.” Roughly 100,000 would-be settlers showed up at the border, from all across the globe, each waiting for their chance to get a free chunk of land — provided they could reach it first. “Everyone wanted to be 15 minutes ahead of everyone else,” one settler wrote, “and no one wanted to be 15 minutes behind anyone.”

The stakes were high. And the border, all 300 loosely guarded miles of it, was susceptible to cheaters. Plus, it being the nineteenth century and all, there was a general disagreement among settlers about when, exactly, noon struck. To try to clear things up, the military on the western border announced it by firing gunshots into the air; on the north, soldiers released a rope that had been blocking the entrance; to the south, a lone bugler blew his horn. And from there, they were off. Oklahoma was born.

The cheaters got in first, because of course they did. The much-coveted site of what would become Oklahoma City, for instance, was miles away from the border in every direction. Yet within minutes of noon being declared, tents were being plunked onto all the best spots. It turned out that ambitious settlers had hid themselves in pretty much any available nook or cranny: up in trees, down in streams and gullies, clinging to the undersides of freight cars. The marshals weren’t much help in laying down the law, because many of them were busy grabbing their own pieces of land. As Anderson writes, “The settlers of Oklahoma City explored the nearly infinite gradations between cheating and non-cheating.” This first, furtive wave of 1889 border-crossers came to be known as “Sooners.”

By the end of day one, the population of Oklahoma had increased by tens of thousands of people. And out of that initial frenzy, the familiar trappings of American civilization quickly asserted themselves. Streets and permanent structures were built. Businesses opened their doors to the public. Within a month, the territory boasted six newspapers and five banks.

Oklahoma hasn’t forgotten its unusual origin story, either. Reenactments of the Land Run are an annual tradition among schoolchildren (though less so in recent years, due to protests from Native Americans claiming these events celebrate the genocide of their peoples, who were, it should be said, not just kicked off the land but also not allowed to participate in the run afterwards). It’s even baked into government lore. Ever since the 1920s, you don’t just visit Oklahoma. You visit the “Sooner State.”

Roughly 100,000 would-be settlers showed up at the border, each waiting for their chance to get a free chunk of land — provided they could reach it first.