Original Antique Mitchell Maps XVII-XVIII

ca.1886

 Dakota, Montana & Wyoming Territories.

 Showing Yellowstone National Park

and on reverse

Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico Territory & Indian Territory

Showing No Man's Land

From 1850-1890, the Panhandle (a 166-mile-long, 34 miles wide  strip of land extending west toward New Mexico ) was officially called the Public Land Strip but was better known as No Man’s Land. It was also called Cimarron Territory and the Neutral Strip, populated by anarchy and munching cattle. It became a narrow region of lawlessness between Kansas and Texas did not really attract the frontier's best elements. Outlaws ran rampant, and violence and mob justice ruled. In 1886, the Secretary of the Interior declared it was public domain, subject to squatter’s rights. Settlers tried governing and policing the area themselves, but a big problem remained: since it had never been formally surveyed, official claims to land there couldn’t be made under the Homestead Act. Finally, in 1890, this orphan rectangle of land was incorporated into Oklahoma Territory, and in 1907 it became part of the state of Oklahoma, which also included the former Indian Territory. Indian Territory had been the end of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and then the progressively reduced promised homeland for many tribes.