The Ethics of a Second Land Run in Oklahoma
By Terrie Petree

On September 16, 1893, the settlers of what is today the small city of Enid, Oklahoma had property ownership on their minds, but they had no need for appraisers. The men and women who were readying to race for free land needed to do only two things: find a fast horse and make an ethical decision. Even without the fast horse, settlers had a chance of getting to one of 42,000 parcels of Cherokee Strip land that were being given away. But swift or slow, there was no getting around the question of land grab ethics and the choice between two epithets. A settler was either going to be a “boomer” or a “sooner.” A boomer waited for the boom of the cannon that officially started the race for land. A sooner arrived ahead of time in order to get a head start on the best claims. Some of the sooners were government workers, surveyors and railroad employees who had a legal right to an early claim. Other sooners secretly crossed the starting line at night, marked their parcels, and then hid themselves until the land run began and they could pretend to have been the first to legally stake the claim. At the end of the day, it was difficult to distinguish the legal claims from the fraudulent claims, and boomers who believed they had been cheated had no recourse. Today, a new breed of sooner threatens the equitable distribution of land and homes in Oklahoma, and some Enid appraisers are feeling the sting.

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