The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1930-08-29

dNJ lbLS NN44Atll14lCu III i d q anu Ia
ent-day descendants of those families
are watching with interest his move
for restitution.
Nor is this Virginia case unique,
for Oklahoma has i somewhat SINH
lar one, only the NO Mans Land
there has Infinitely greater potential
riches TO make ii worth fighting for
1t is a small triangular tract of about
two acres in the heart of the great
Oklahoma City oil fields which has
been lost" for 60 years. No Boomer
homesteaded it after the run" into
Oklahoma in 1889. The surveyors and
mapmakers seemed TO have missed il
and it is still government soil.
No one seems TO have dreamed that
this valuable parcel of land was avail
able TO a claimer until recently when
Forrest Parrot of Oklahoma City,
guided by maps which others had seen,
no doubt, but failed 10 realize their
significance, began q bit Of prospect
ing" in the archives of the register
of deeds at the Oklahoma county
court house.
What he found was almost unbe-
lievable-a plot of unclaimed land,
sandwiched right in the middle of one
Of the richest oil areas of the world.
So Mr.. Parrot staged the run Of
1880" With an armful of stakes he
dashed out TO the little silver of river
bottom land and drove his pegs.
Then, as in the prairie schooner and
sunbonnet days of A years ago, Mr..
PARROT set about making his claim
legal. He went back to the court
house and filed an affidavit of his
claim, setting forth he was filing on
ii as homestead and claiming pri-
ority rights as an ex-service man.
The triangular shape Of the neg
the antics Of the Nerth Canadian
river.
When the government surveyors
made their first survey of 1870 they
did an excellent job for working out
the river bottom into chopped-up lots,
but they forgot this one tract.
The tract is in the center Of the
most intense drilling activity in the
Oklahoma City oil field. Half a mile
east is T. B. Sticks No. l Bailey H.
O00-barrel-a-day well, and the same
distance south the 22.0O0-barrel-a-day
well owned by Writ Franklin.
And yet these are only two ex-
amples Of queer claims which result
from surveyors or mapmakers' errors
or some slip-up in registering deeds or
some other title TO land. curious
case was reported from New York re-
Gently, and added another item TO the
record of high-priced real estate in
that city where some plots of ground
are literally worth more than the
number of silver dollars it would take
TO cover them. In this case a pur-
chaser Of real estate paid a total Of
81 200 for 21S square inches of land
$3.50 square inch 1t came about in
this way:
One of the Mrs. Vanderbilts wanted
to buy plot Of ground in East Fifty
seventh street between First avenue
and the river, on which once stood
five brownstones, built in the seven
ties by one Harvey Dennis, a consid-
cradle realtor of his day. Naturally
the prospective purchaser wanted to
be sure she had clear claim to the
title, so she had experts of the Title
Guarantee & Trust company look it up.
For what If after the house were
erected somebody should bob up and
claim strip Of property, eighteen feet
by one inch, running right through
the building? Such a demand would
form a grave crisis. In this instance
hunt was made for the Dennis heirs.
1t was hard TO find them. 1t took two
months, during which time more than
800 letters were written Finally
they were located. There were six
heirs in all. The situation was ex-
planned.
The title company people finally got
them to sign a quitclaim for $500
each, or 81 200 in all. That isn't
much but then neither was the land
TO which they were Internationally
the heirs. Ii amounted. in fact, to
just one and half square feet.
Perhaps the smallest piece of real
estate in the world is another tract
in the same city. 1t is located in the
middle of Sheridan square on Chris
topher street, small triangular bit
which measures "a inches along each
side. 1t bears the inscription. prop
erty Of the Hess Estate which has
never been dedicated for public pur-
poses"
But IL New York can claim the
smallest and the highest priced pieces
| of real estate, Chicago can point with
pride to the worlds costliest COW
path which runs right through mod
ern 22-story skyscraper known as the
100 West Monroe building.
The cow path dates from the early
SOS when DR.. Jared Bassett bought