1886 Original Antique Mitchell Map

 United States 

& 

Territories:

WA,ID,MT,WY,UT,AZ,NM

Dakota & Indian Territories

showing 

Union Pacific & Southern Pacific Rail Roads

Yellowstone National Park

&

"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.

(The map is undated but by examining the configuration of states' county lines the map dates no later than 1886. )

18.6" x 11.6"

 Beautifully handpainted in five different colors

The map was carefully removed from:

Mitchell's Modern Atlas

Publisher

E. B. Butler & Company

Philadelphia

1886

(Atlas cover and title page are not part of the sale but for documentation only.)