We Were There at the Oklahoma Land Run by Jim Kjelgaard is about a young boy and a young girl who adventure in Oklahoma around the time that the territory was added to the United States. Kjelgaard writes a fascinating historical adventure series placing young students in the middle of the action of yesteryear. Excerpt: "Thousands of land-hungry people edged the Oklahoma border that April day in 1889, awaiting the signal that would send them across! What was in store for them? Wild riding! Possibly danger. Certainly adventure. And young Alec Simpson with his twin sisters, Cindy and Mindy, was to be a part of it. It had been a long, hard journey for Jed Simpson and his family up the Cherokee Trail from Missouri. But the promised prize of a homestead in the rich, fertile land of Oklahoma was worth it. Then came the long-awaited starting shot!"

Nine-year-old Jesse convinces his injured father to let him drive the wagon during the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush.

Located along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, at a stop known as Oklahoma Station, Oklahoma City was born on April 22, 1889, at 12 noon. By 6:00 p.m., she had a population of around 10,000 citizens. As with any birth, there were many firsts in the newly opened territory, and many of these landmark events have been captured and preserved in historic photographs. With images culled from the archives of the author‚'s own vast personal collection as well as the Oklahoma Historical Society and other collections, the stories of prosperity and development of the area‚'s first settlers are told through Statehood. In light of this perseverance, it is no wonder that Theodore Roosevelt announced, ‚"Men and Women of Oklahoma. I was never in your country until last night, but I feel at home here. I am blood of your blood, and bone of your bone, and I am bound to some of you, and to your sons, by the strongest ties that can bind one man to another.‚"

Annie Mae's family is looking forward to beginning a new life—on their own land. When the Oklahoma Territory is opened in 1889, they and thousands of other settlers race across the border to claim some land of their own. But there is not enough for everyone, and Annie Mae is afraid of trouble ahead. Even if they find their beautiful land, will they be able to keep it?

After immigrants flooded into central Oklahoma during the land rush of 1889 and the future capital of Oklahoma City sprang up “within a fortnight,” the city’s residents adopted the slogan “born grown” to describe their new home. But the territory’s creation was never so simple or straightforward. The real story, steeped in the politics of the Gilded Age, unfolds in 1889, Michael J. Hightower’s revealing look at a moment in history that, in all its turmoil and complexity, transcends the myth. Hightower frames his story within the larger history of Old Oklahoma, beginning in Indian Territory, where displaced tribes and freedmen, wealthy cattlemen, and prospective homesteaders became embroiled in disputes over public land and federal government policies. Against this fraught background, 1889 travels back and forth between Washington, D.C., and the Oklahoma frontier to describe the politics of settlement, public land use, and the first stirrings of urban development. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, Hightower captures the drama of the Boomer incursions and the Run of ’89, as well as the nascent urbanization of the townsite that would become Oklahoma City. All of these events played out in a political vacuum until Congress officially created Oklahoma Territory in the Organic Act of May 1890. The story of central Oklahoma is profoundly American, showing the region to have been a crucible for melding competing national interests and visions of the future. Boomers, businessmen, cattlemen, soldiers, politicians, pundits, and African and Native Americans squared off—sometimes peacefully, often not—in disagreements over public lands that would resonate in western history long after 1889.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.