Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Haunted Oklahoma City
    Haunted Oklahoma City
    Haunted Oklahoma City
    Ebook189 pages2 hours

    Haunted Oklahoma City

    By Jeff Provine and Tanya McCoy

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Oklahoma City boasts a rich heritage of gumption and perseverance, but there are many tales only whispered from shadows. A spectral woman may be seen in the upper window of the Overholser Mansion, looking for her long-lost love. The spirit of one of Oklahoma's feistiest leaders is said to dwell in the Governor's Mansion, where he trips guests on the stairs. Perhaps still thirsty for the drink a fatal gunshot interrupted, the ghost of a cheating mobster rattles the glasses at Gabriella's off Route 66. Jeff Provine and Tanya McCoy uncover the curious and creepy tales of the Sooner State capital.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateOct 3, 2016
    ISBN9781439657621
    Haunted Oklahoma City
    Author

    Jeff Provine

    Jeff Provine is a farm kid turned college professor. After growing up on a farm dating back to the Land Run of 1893, he attended the School of Science and Math before going on to complete his master's at the University of Oklahoma. In 2009 he began the OU Ghost Tour. He writes webcomics, blogs regularly, campaigns for the integration of internet media into the classroom and has developed courses on the history of comic books and the life of Charlie Chaplin.

    Read more from Jeff Provine

    Related to Haunted Oklahoma City

    Related ebooks

    Photography For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Slain Men Were Drug Traffickers

      Jan 10, 2021

      THE two men who were shot, beheaded and set alight had worked for alleged drug lord Yaganathan Pillay, also known as Teddy Mafia, until they switched loyalties. This was according to a witness to this week’s triple killing in Shallcross, Durban, whic

      2 min read

    • Article

      Following His Nose

      Feb 21, 2023

      Following His Nose
      3 min read

    • Article

      Secret Society

      Mar 30, 2023

      Secret Society
      5 min read

    • Article

      Pride Of Place

      Nov 7, 2020

      Pride Of Place
      4 min read

    • Article

      The best bad things

      Sep 29, 2020

      The best bad things
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Legacy Of Hope And Glory

      Jun 9, 2021

      DESPITE my birthplace in the Mississippi Delta and my early years in schools whose teachers tried hard to educate the children in the poorest state in the Union, I reckon I had a head start when I arrived in Suffolk as the bride of a farmer. White ch

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rock Springs Riot Revisited

      Sep 1, 2023

      Rock Springs Riot Revisited
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Parting

      Jul 6, 2021

      The Parting
      10 min read

    • Article

      Hoofprints Through History Part 2: Orphans Preferred

      Nov 20, 2018

      In my last column, I talked about the role in history of the Mongolian horse, which enabled Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes to subjugate most of Central Asia. Several hundred years later, and several thousand miles to the west of the Mongol Empire

      9 min read

    • Article

      If These Walls Could Talk

      Apr 27, 2021

      If These Walls Could Talk
      6 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2022

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      Along Forgotten Paths

      Jun 5, 2019

      Along Forgotten Paths
      7 min read

    • Article

      In The Belly Of The Whale

      Jul 30, 2020

      In The Belly Of The Whale
      11 min read

    • Article

      Butchering the Mythic West

      Jan 5, 2021

      Butchering the Mythic West
      14 min read

    • Article

      Merge

      Jan 30, 2020

      Merge
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Long Road home

      Oct 20, 2022

      The Long Road home
      13 min read

    • Article

      Lights, Camera, Corsicana

      Nov 26, 2020

      Lights, Camera, Corsicana
      10 min read

    • Article

      BITS & PIECES

      May 31, 2022

      In 1947, my friend Hazel and I both worked at Kansas Power and Light in Topeka, Kan. We decided to take a vacation out east with the Berry Tours travel agency (all meals were included). We took a bus to Kansas City, and then we traveled by train and

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Testament to Survival

      Sep 1, 2020

      A Testament to Survival
      7 min read

    • Article

      Readers Respond merge

      Oct 17, 2023

      Readers Respond merge
      2 min read

    • Article

      Kennedy Farm Restoration Near

      Oct 17, 2023

      Kennedy Farm Restoration Near
      7 min read

    • Article

      Indianola, Onward

      May 14, 2019

      Indianola, Onward
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Haunted Oklahoma City

    3/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Haunted Oklahoma City - Jeff Provine

      McCoy.

      INTRODUCTION

      HISTORY OF THE CITY

      The word Oklahoma was coined during the negotiations of 1866 as new treaties were being determined between the Five Civilized Tribes and the federal government after the Civil War. The Choctaw Nation had sent its principal chief, Allen Wright, as part of the delegation, and when asked what the collective lands of the tribes could be called, he suggested Okla, meaning people, and homa, meaning red. The new word was adopted by all parties and soon became recognized around the country.

      The Treaty of 1866 carried several stipulations, including granting railroad right of ways, upholding the U.S. Constitution and enforcing the sale of the less populated western lands, which would be used as future reservations. While more Native Americans were moved into Indian Territory, there remained nearly three thousand square miles of Unassigned Lands.

      These lands were far from empty. For millennia, buffalo herds had roamed the area, which was dubbed the Osage Plains on maps. While the Osage in the north stood as the strongest force in the area, it was also visited by hunting parties of Comanches, Kiowas, Tonkawas and more. Even white men ventured into the area to explore, as Washington Irving recounted in a story of joining a buffalo hunt in present-day Moore, Oklahoma, in his famous book Tour of the Prairies. Jesse Chisholm worked to settle the area more permanently with one of his trading posts in 1858. It stood just east of the North Canadian River, where, today, it is crossed by Northwest Tenth, a ford said to be called Dead Man’s Crossing, as a body was discovered there. The Civil War interrupted his settlement, but he reestablished it when the conflict had ended.

      Chisholm was not the only one looking to colonize the plains. The Boomer movement began with David L. Payne, whose interpretation of the Homestead Act of 1862 stated that the Unassigned Lands were federal property available to settlers at 160 acres apiece. Legally, the area was set aside for future tribal use, but that did not stop Payne from starting an Oklahoma Colony company. Would-be settlers paid twenty-five dollars for a town lot in the future capital of the territory, and a two-dollar subscription entitled them to entry to the colony and 160 acres. Payne was estimated to have taken in over $100,000 in dues, though none of his colonies lasted more than a few weeks.

      The first Payne expedition crossed into the Unassigned Lands in 1880 and pushed on to the North Canadian River, beginning a settlement near what today would be Trosper Park. Cavalry from Fort Reno arrived two weeks later, arrested the small populace and escorted it back to Kansas. Despite Payne’s death while promoting in Arkansas, the Boomer movement lived on under William Couch. More colonies popped up over the years in areas that would become Stiles Park, Council Grove and the ghost town Ewing, which still has its cemetery near Northeast Sixty-Third Street. There seemed to be something about the area that drew settlers.

      Land once claimed by Boomers now stands as Trosper Park.

      While the Boomers struggled, the famed cattle drives of the 1860s and ’70s showed that the land was suitable for hardy folk. Technology supplanted the cattle drives as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway sought to connect its railhead at Arkansas City, Kansas, with Fort Worth, Texas. To do so, the railroad would have to establish several new stops along the way to resupply the steam engines with fresh water and coal. Little settlements were established in 1887 at Deer Creek Station (which would become Guthrie), Norman Station and, near the North Canadian River, Oklahoma Station.

      In 1889, the Boomers at last won out. Anticipating that the land would likely be seized anyhow, a delegation from the Creek Nation went to Washington that January to suggest the lands be resold to the federal government, free and clear. A rider was attached to the annual Indian Appropriation Bill approving $1.25 per acre for the nearly 1.4 million acres to the Creeks, and the Seminoles received a $2 million total payment for their share. President Benjamin Harrison, only three weeks into his term, signed the proclamation that the land would be opened for settlement at noon on April 22. Any adult head of household could claim 160 acres, provided they would prove it up by building a house and planting crops. Smaller town plots were laid out in planned communities, and those along the railway were the most valuable of all.

      For weeks ahead of the opening, crowds gathered at the border. The law stated that no person who entered the Unassigned Lands before noon that day would be eligible for a claim due to their unfair advantage. Even employees of the Santa Fe Railway, who had a right to be in the area, were not eligible. Still, that did not stop many people from slipping in sooner than allowed, whether through the long, empty border at night or simply hopping off the train and hiding in the brush. Scores of people were said to have camped out the night before at Oklahoma Station, leaving before dawn only to hide in the bulrushes and cottonwoods of the North Canadian River to wait.

      When the soldiers sounded noon, hopeful thousands leaped into the greatest race in history, driving wagons, riding ponies and even hurrying on foot. Many of the future citizens of Oklahoma City rode the trains leaving from Purcell in the south and Ponca in the north. The trains ran overloaded, but only those resilient few stayed aboard rather than jumping off at Norman or, especially, Guthrie, which was expected to become the new territory’s capital.

      The riders from the Indian Meridian fifteen miles to the east arrived at Oklahoma Station to find many of the key lots already claimed. Even the sneaky Sooners were shocked to find as they crawled from the rushes that many of the railroad employees had staked lots in the thirty or forty minutes they had waited after noon to ensure they looked beyond suspicion. The ex-railroaders had turned in their notice before midnight and were thus no longer employed by Santa Fe on the day of the Run. Technically, they were not entering the Unassigned Lands because they were already legally there.

      With forty-five figures, the Centennial Land Run Monument is one of the longest freestanding bronze sculptures in the world.

      To add to the tangled mess, claim jumpers soon appeared. Anyone letting their guard down was susceptible to someone moving in and setting up their own camp. Two runners might stake the same claim one soon after the other, and, while they argued, have both their stakes torn out by a third person who then asserted to be the owner. Worst of all, to be legally recognized as the claimant, the new owner had to leave their land behind and travel to the land office in Guthrie, where the wait to be processed could be days or even weeks.

      In Harper’s Weekly, Richard Harding Davis described the scene at Oklahoma Station: Pilgrims fall on both knees, and hammer stakes into the ground and pull them up again and drive them down somewhere else, at a place which they hope will eventually become a corner lot facing the post office, and drag up the next man’s stake, and threaten him with a Winchester because he is on their land which they have owned for at least three minutes. One clever runner first set up his cookstove and heated it red hot to make it impossible for any claim jumper to clear his place.

      Amid the chaos of the land run, there were many legitimate citizens who rightfully beat the odds and claimed a new home for themselves. Davis had noted that on the morning of the Run, Oklahoma Station consisted of a home for the railroad agent and four other small buildings. By nightfall, the area that would become Oklahoma City had an estimated twelve thousand people. Among them was colony-founder William Couch himself, who finally lived out his Boomer dream with a claim staked on what would become West Main Street.

      At the time, there were no streets. The surveyors who had marked the area had neglected to mark out any between lots, meaning people had to climb over one another’s camps just to get down to the river for a drink of water. Enterprising parents sent their children down to the river with buckets to sell water door to door. One particularly enterprising fellow set up a booth at the rail depot’s public well and sold fresh, cool well water for $0.05 a pint ($1.44 in 2015). When authorities caught word of this, he was quickly escorted away from his would-be business, and the well was reopened to the public.

      Within one month, Oklahoma City already had wooden and brick buildings, though many pioneers still lived in tents and dugouts. Courtesy RetroMetro OKC Resources Committee.

      Depending on soldiers to keep the peace was a good stopgap measure, but the question of who would govern these citizens arose. For the time being, soldiers from Fort Reno had been stationed in a campsite between the railroad and the north bend of the river in the east. While soldiers at similar camps in Guthrie and Norman were withdrawn only weeks after the land run, those in Oklahoma City had to be reinforced by the Fifth Cavalry while two different groups were jockeying for supremacy of the wild new town.

      The troubles started when the Oklahoma Colony Company began surveying a plat for the city at the railway, working westward. As the surveyors came down what would become Sheridan Avenue, they arrived face to rifle with Seminole Land and Improvement Company surveyors, who had been making their own plat in the north. The two plats did not quite line up, and neither side would budge on giving up. As they laid their own streets, there was a distinct jog along what was then called Grand Avenue. These jogs lasted until the urban renewal of the 1960s, when heavy demolition finally corrected them.

      Disagreements in geography were only the beginning. At 3:00 p.m. on April 22, the Oklahoma Town Company called for an election. The Seminoles arrived shortly thereafter with a written town charter and declared their own elections. The Oklahoma Town Company then wrote its own charter and called for a new election. The two political parties sparred back and forth over any issue that could possibly arise until finally U.S. marshal R.A. Walker of Kansas arrived to enforce the electoral process. For five months, the town was run by marshals, including Deputy Charles Colcord, who would go on to serve as chief of police before striking it rich with oil and building his famed hotel. With order restored, the federal government hosted the city’s incorporation and dispatched additional land agents to judge the conflicting issues with claim jumpers and Sooners.

      It was a strange start to Oklahoma (which wouldn’t add City officially until 1923), but soon, a real town thrived on the rolling prairie. In the 1890 census, Oklahoma City had a permanent population of 5,086, just 800 behind Guthrie, which had, indeed, become the capital. A rivalry was born that

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1