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    Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History
    Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History
    Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History

    By Alton Pryor

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    About this ebook

    Oklahoma is a young state but its history goes back to the 1540s. Oklahoma Territory was originally planned as an area for the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Pressure from white settlers forced the government to open up the territory to settlement.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlton Pryor
    Release dateOct 28, 2012
    ISBN9781301603831
    Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History
    Author

    Alton Pryor

    Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. After retiring, he turned to writing books. He is the author of 18 books, which he has published himself.

    Read more from Alton Pryor

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      Book preview

      Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History - Alton Pryor

      Little Known Tales in Oklahoma History

      Alton Pryor

      Copyright 2012 by Alton Pryor

      Smashwords Edition

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1: The Oklahoma Dust Bowl

      Chapter 2: The Oklahoma Finally Gets Statehood

      Chapter 3: The Oklahoma Land Rush

      Chapter 4: Drilling for Water, He Hits Oil

      Chapter 5: George Miller’s 101 Ranch

      Chapter 6: Search for the Seven Cities of Gold

      Chapter 7: Black Kettle, the Cheyenne Chief

      Chapter 8: Oklahoma’s State Flag

      Chapter 9: The Panhandle and No Man’s Land

      Chapter 10: Pioneer Jesse Chisholm

      Chapter 11: The Railroads Come to Oklahoma

      Chapter 12: Quanah Parker

      Chapter 13: Oklahoma’s All-Black Towns

      Chapter 14: Old Boggy Depot

      Chapter 15: Naming of the Canadian River

      Chapter 16: Isaac Parker, the Hanging Judge

      Chapter 17: He Brought Literacy to the Cherokee

      Chapter 18: Oklahoma and Education

      Chapter 19: The ‘Staked Plains’

      Chapter 20: The Chicken Fried Steak

      Chapter 21: State’s First Woman Politician

      Chapter 22: Twin Territories of Oklahoma

      Chapter 23: The Arbuckle Mountains

      Chapter 24: The Indian Ferries

      Chapter 1

      The Oklahoma Dust Bowl

      Dust Bowl clouds blackened the sky.

      Storms of eroded farm land swept across the Oklahoma plains during the 1930s, killing crops and sending folks packing for the west and new opportunities.

      The dust bowl period was called the Dirty Thirties. Thousands of farm families loaded their belongings into beat-up Fords and followed Route 66 to California.

      The dust bowl migration began in earnest in 1935 and peaked in 1937 and 1938. It was about ten years before the rains reappeared across the Great Plains. Once farming opportunities improved, many of the dust bowl migrants returned home after facing discrimination and often greater hardships in California.

      It was deep plowing of the virgin top soil across the Great Plains that displaced the deep-rooted grasses which kept the soil in place and started the dust flying

      At times, the dust clouds blackened the sky and reached all the way to the East Coast cities of New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the top soil itself was carried by prevailing winds and deposited in the Atlantic Ocean.

      Cyclonic winds traveling at speeds up to 100 miles per hour rolled out of the Dakotas and traveled across Nebraska, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

      Dirt clouds churned 20,000 feet into the air and created a thousand-mile-wide duster.

      The dust bowl affected one hundred million acres of land, most of it centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, but also scattered across adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

      The migration of the Okies was a sad story indeed. They migrated to California and other states, but often found economic conditions little better than what they had just left.

      The term Okie was coined by Ben Reddick, a freelance journalist of the mid-1930s. He noticed that many of the migrant’s license plates were from Oklahoma and began referring to them as Okies. The term simply caught on and spread with other newspapers.

      This Migrant Mother photo by Dorothea Lange was circulated world wide.

      The dust bowl caused many to think that the Great Plains was unsuitable for agriculture. Unfortunately, an unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that "rain follows the plow, and that the climate had changed permanently.

      The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history within a short period of time. By 1940, two and a half million people moved out of the Plains states. Of those, 200,000 moved to California.

      The migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as Okies and Arkies.

      Los Angeles police stationed themselves at the Arizona border to check the wave of dust bowlers rolling into California. The police held all immigrants at the state line, allowing only a few to cross at a time, and turning many back.

      This checkpoint didn’t last and emigration on Route 66 continued through the 1930s.

      One California farmer said it this way, This isn’t migration, it’s an invasion. They’re worse than a plague of locusts.

      In 1937, California passed an Anti-Okie Law, making it a misdemeanor to bring or assist in bringing any indigent person into the state. The law was later declared unconstitutional.

      Will Rogers quipped that the migration of Okies to California raised the intellectual level of both states.

      The poor economy brought more than farmers to California. There were many teachers, lawyers and small business owners. About one-eight of California’s population is from

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