'As the expectant home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a cavalry bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the open country like fiends. The horsemen had the best of it from the start. It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they had reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as eye could see. Even the fleetest of the horsemen found upon reaching their chosen localities that men in wagons and men on foot were there before them. As it was clearly impossible for a man on foot to outrun a horseman, the inference is plain that Oklahoma had been entered hours before the appointed time.' -Harper's Weekly 33 (May 18, 1889): 391-94.
How did the Homestead Act encourage settlement of the new Western frontier?
Who were the real Sooners and why should the Oklahoma football team change their name?
What was appealing about Oklahoma? Would you want to live there? Why?
In 1890 the national census concluded there was no longer a square mile of the US that wasn't settled. According to Historian Frederick Jackson Turner's 'Frontier Thesis' the closing of the American Frontier means the gradual decline of our Democracy. Do you think the United States needs to continue to expand? If not why? If so where?
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