The Portland daily press., 1889-04-11
THE PARADISE OF THE BOOMERS.
Wise Settlers Will Build Huts on
Their Particular slices,
Before other Hungry Claimants
Succeed In Stealing Them.
The Surplus Of Boomers May Re-
suit In More Lands.

WASHINGTON, April 10.-The general land
office is making every effort to get the land
offices at King Fisher station and Gustine
ready for business by noon on April %, when
Oklahoma will be opened, but it is going to
be pretty difficult, No postofiice is open at
either place. At Gustine a postoffice has
been ordered, but the postmaster has not yet
filed his bond, and there may be some delay
about getting the Office opened. The general
land Office has sent quantity of blanks and
documents to the Oklahoma offices by mail,
and they are stuck somewhere in Kansas.
Unless they get through pretty soon dupli-
cate shipment will have to be made by ex-
press. The office here is not informed
whether King Fisher stage station possesses
single building of any kind. 1t is 25 or 80
miles from a railroad, and the facilities for
building houses are not the best, but if it is
learned in day or two that there is not an
edifice in the future metropolis of Western
Oklahama, the general land Office will buy
portable house in Caldwell and ship 1t in
sections and get it set up some time next
week.
No end of trouble is anticipated from the
enormous rush into this very limited tract.
There are only about 10000 quarter sections,
and about 100000 people have made all their
arrangements for invading the promised
land the moment the President of the Uuited
States drops the hat, 1t is true that many of
these will be prospectors and spectators
and money lenders of all kinds, but the most
reasonable estimate that can be made puts
about tlve claimants on every quarter sec
tion. For every well watered and we'll sit
uated quarter section there will be dozen
claimants, and they will all initiate their
claims so nearly simultaneously that as the
only witnesses will be rival claimants, it will
be simply impossible to determine who To-
Gated first, and hundreds of disputes will
have to be settled by primitive appeal to
force. The homesteaders who first make
their settlement and take their time about
making their filing will find themselves iu
contests with other men whose entries were
filed earlier. The h0mesteaders who go first
to the land office will find when they get
back to their coveted 100 acres that two or
three other men are in possession and quar-
reling over it. 1t will be the wiser course
for every man who wants slice of Oklaho-
ma to get on to it at the earliest possible mo-
ment of the move on April %, and devote
himself to making burrow or a hut and
breaking up little ground for crop. He
has three months after making his settle
ment in which to file his entry, and the most
essential thing for him is to make his settle
ment.
Besides register and receiver at each land
office there will be for the present an inspec-
tor, and there may be a special agent. Every
effort will be made to transact the business
at the land offices rapidly and accurately, but
somewhere between four-fftbs and nine
tenths of the people who are going into Ok
lah0ma week from LeXt Monday will get
no land because there won't be land enough
to go around. They will have to do some
thing, and they will be pretty certain to
camp down on all the un0ccupied land of the
civilized Indian tribes. 1t is very doubtful
If the government would attempt to drive
them off these lands by the bayonet, and
nothing less than the entire army could ac-
it. The boomers will get the land,
and the government will probably settle
with the Indians. The Cherokee outlet.
some six million acres, may be
thrown open by the Presidents proclama-
tion as soon as the commissioners and the
Indians can agree ON the terms of cesson
and, as this tract is three times as large as
.he portion of Oklahoma that will be opened
1n the 22nd, it would, if opened promptly,
afford relief to the throngs that will be in
side Oklahoma in two weeks.