Oklahoma
The Sooner State

"Promptly at noon, on the twenty-second day of April, 1889, the cavalrymen, who patroled the borders of the promised land, fired their carbines in the air as a signal that the settlers could move across the line. A mighty shout arose and then the race for claims and homes began.

"Hundreds crowded the trains of the single railway line that entered Oklahoma; thousands rode in buggies and buckboards, and others yet, in heavy farm wagons, drawn by slower teams; yes, and some even made the race on foot!

"The scene at the instant of starting was one never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. But soon it began to resemble the utter rout of a defeated and retreating army rather than the orderly advance of an invading host. It was at once the culmination and the climax of the story of American pioneering."

A HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
Joseph B. Thoburn and Isaac M. Holcolmb
Doub & Company, San Francisco, 1908
page 174