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A land run or land rush was an event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened to Homestead Act on a first-arrival basis. Lands were opened and sold first-come or by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other than a run. The settlers, no matter how they acquired occupancy, purchased the land from the United States General Land Office. For Reservation Indian lands, the Land Office distributed the sales funds to the various tribal entities, according to previously negotiated terms. The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the most prominent of the land runs while the Land Run of 1893 was the largest. The opening of the former Kickapoo area in 1895 was the last use of a land run in the present area of Oklahoma.
The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 eventually led to the Trail of Tears. Creek and Seminole tribes were granted area known before the Land Run as the Unassigned Lands. Some American Indian tribes signed a treaty of alliance with the Confederacy in 1861. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Indian Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, Indian Territory was a new home to a variety of tribes, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Apache.
The Land Run of September 22, 1891, opened the Iowa tribe, Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, and Shawnee lands to settlement. The land run opened 6,097 plots of each of former reservation land. Oklahoma Land Run Openings 1889–1907 (accessed October 6, 2013). On the following day, a land run was held to settle Tecumseh, the pre-designated location of the county seat of County B, later renamed as Pottawatomie County. On September 28, 1891, another land run was held to settle Chandler, the pre-designated location of the county seat of County A, later renamed as Lincoln County.
The Land Run of April 19, 1892, opened the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands.
The Land Run of September 16, 1893 was known as the Cherokee Outlet Land Run. It opened 8,144,682.91 acres (12,726 square miles or about 3.3 million hectares) to settlement. The land was purchased from the . It was the largest land run in U.S. history, four times larger than the Land Rush of 1889.Green, Donald E., " Settlement Patterns," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 2009. Accessed March 1, 2015. The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center museum at the eastern edge of Enid, Oklahoma commemorates this event.
The final land run in Oklahoma was the Land Run of 1895 to settle the Kickapoo people lands. Each run had exhibited many problems and the Federal Government deemed the run to be an inefficient way to distribute land to would-be settlers. After 1895, the government distributed land by sealed-bid auctions. Major openings by this method included Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation (1901), the Wichita-Caddo Reservation (1901), and the Big Pasture (1906). Everett, Dianna. "Land Openings." Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Accessed July 22, 2016.
There was one land run in the 20th century, but on a much smaller scale, held to select lots in the community of Arcadia, on August 6, 1901. This was similar to the run to settle Chandler in 1891. Young, Roy B. "Apache," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Accessed September 1, 2016.
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