Map of the Oklahoma Country in the Indian Territory

Mapping Oklahoma’s First Land Run.

This fascinating map, one of the first to show the newly organized Oklahoma Territory, was published in Chicago in 1889 by George Cram. That same year, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed the approximately 2,000,000 acres were open for settlement. This sparked the region’s first Land Rush, when masses of prospective emigrants would flock over the borders to stake their claim. According to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History,

“The ink was hardly dry on Harrison’s March 23, 1889, proclamation before Oklahoma settlement colonies were being formed in major U.S. cities. A multitude of impoverished farmers were not alone in their zeal to settle the Unassigned Lands, known popularly as the Oklahoma Lands. Tradesmen, professional men, common laborers, capitalists, and politicians alike looked to the cornucopia of opportunity offered by the settlement of the long-withheld lands of Indian Territory.

Across the nation, prospective settlers began hitching their teams to wagons and loading aboard their families and scant worldly goods. Others saddled their fastest horses or caught trains for what they considered to be the most advantageous point of entry. “It is an astonishing thing,” the New York Herald observed on the eve of the opening, “that men will fight harder for $500 worth of land than they will for $10,000 in money.”

Source.