The Land Run of 1889, although not without precedent in the history of the West, began the disposal of the federal public domain in Oklahoma. The legal basis for opening the Oklahoma District, now called the Unassigned Lands, came in 1889 when, in the U.S. Congress, Illinois Rep. William Springer amended the Indian Appropriations Bill to authorize Pres. Benjamin Harrison to proclaim the two-million-acre region open for settlement. Under the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862, a legal settler could claim 160 acres of public land, and those who lived on and improved the claim for five years could receive a title.
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 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."
