Dell - Memorial to Pioneers Who Made the Land Run of 1893 - Tonkawa, OK
N 36° 37.908 W 097° 16.974
14S E 653521 N 4055400
A memorial to a horse, Dell, her owner, Jim H. Stone, and the other pioneers who made the Land Run of 1893 stands at the former site of Mr. Stone's home, on the east side of US 77, nearly five miles south of Tonkawa, OK.
Waymark Code: WMYXBD
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 08/05/2018
Views: 3
Dell was important enough to be mentioned on a memorial honoring those who made the Land Run of 1893, with a fairly large depiction of her to accompany the text: After all, Mr. Stone couldn't have made the run without her! Way back in 1989, Dell merited a reference in a 1989
article in
The Oklahoman about horse memorials throughout Oklahoma, with a comment that, "If living today, she would be a good entry for a stakes race at Remington."
Due to encroachment and illegal trespassing upon their lands by local ranchers, in March of 1893, the Cherokee were pressured into selling their land in the Cherokee Outlet, a sixty-mile wide strip of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border between the 96th and 100th meridians. In 1891, it was about 225 miles long and contained 8,144,682.91 acres. After the Civil War, an existing treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the United States Government was re-written, as a measure to punish the Cherokee for having allied themselves with the Confederacy. It gave the US Government the right to dispose of land in the Cherokee Outlet as it saw fit.
On September 16, 1893, Oklahoma's fourth and largest land run began at noon: First come, first settled, with some "Sooners" getting an early start. An estimated 100,000 participants hoped to stake claims on the six million acres and forty thousand homesteads on what had been Cherokee grazing land.
This gray, granite monument has an inset depiction of Dell, and it reads:
This marks the homestead of Jim H. Stone, who made the run September 16, 1893, on Dell a 3 yr. old, from the S.W. corner of Sumner County to this homestead, 29 mi. in 1 hr. 47 min. Dell died 1916, age 26.
This monument honors those pioneers who made the run.
The officers of the Old Settlers of the Cherokee Outlet in 1940.
Harvey L. Wile
Amos Thomas
Jim H. Stone
Oliver L. Chambers
Tom Sheets
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This monument donated by Hand Bros. Monument Builders, in honor of their uncle, Carl Hahn, who made the run past this spot and was a life long friend of Jim H. Stone.
--1940--