Opening of Cherokee Outlet ~ Arkansas City, Kansas, USA
Posted by: 
brwhiz
N 37° 02.089 W 097° 02.351
14S E 674395 N 4100532
This Historical Marker, commemorating the largest land rush in the Oklahoma Territory, is located in a small park between US Highway 77 and 61st Lane (Lovers Lane) at 306th Road just south of Arkansas City, Kansas.
Waymark Code: WMGEG0
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 02/22/2013
Views: 3
Opening of Cherokee Outlet
At noon on September 16, 1893, more than 100,000 people lined the borders of the Cherokee Outlet listening for the pistol shots that started one of the world's greatest races. The prize was 8,000,000 acres of land: a quarter section or a town lot to every eligible settler who could stake a claim. For weeks 50,000 homeseekers and speculators from all parts of the country had been gathering to make the run from this vicinity. Jockeying for position as noon approached were city cabs, bicycles, covered wagons, buggies, ox teams, Indian ponies, and race horses. Thousands prepared to walk and other thousands filled the cars of special railroad trains. When the pistols were fired the mad rush began along 400 miles of border. By nightfall the Outlet, which for centuries had been home of the Indian, the coyote and the buffalo, was a settled land of townsites and homesteads