The Okalahoma Land Run (Repeat of 48-03-07)

This is Don Holland back in Oklahoma country. In exactly 27 minutes and 30 seconds at fine noon on this 22nd day of April 1889, you will see the biggest land grab in the history of the United States.

The simultaneous roll of about 100 cannon and rifles around a more than 200 mile boundary will start 100,000 Nebraskans, Buckeyes, Progers, Jayhawkers, Texans, Razorbacks from Arkansas on a wild race for Freeland. For this is the day, and this is the hour President Benjamin Harrison has set for the opening of the unassigned ferry.

In 27 minutes, 187,000 acres of blue stem grass which once fed grazing herds of buffalo and cattle will be marked with sign saying, keep well. No trespassing, private pups. The Oklahoma Land Run. Uncle Sam is waiting to give away 12,000 free shares of American Prairie and 100,000 are waiting to make a run for it.

CBS takes you back 60 years to the wildest land grab in history. All things are as they were then, except for one thing. When CBS is there, you are there. You are there, produced and directed by Robert Luas-Sheyane, is based upon authentic historical fact and quotation.

And now, a first-minute second, 1889. The old plumber. This lonely depot here in the heart of the Oklahoma Prairie will be shattered by the roar of land-hungry thousands massed around its borders. But now all you can hear in this small wooden shack is casual conversation of the waiting cavalry, the telegraph key of the Santa Fe station master. Beyond that, no sound but the sigh of

the April wind, the occasional cry of a crow flying past. On the way down here I passed big tickets of cottonwood, bur oak, walnut, elm, locuston, persimmon. Clums grow wild along the streams and I don't know how many prairie chickens, Jackrabbits, deer and coyotes we passed in the train. When I first stepped off at Oklahoma Station at Cavalry Lieutenant,