At noon on September 16, 1893, more than 100,000 people surged into the Cherokee Outlet chasing roughly 40,000 homesteads and town lots. But the famous race is only part of the story. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at the economic hardship that brought families to the starting line, the long registration lines and brutal September heat, and the Cherokee Nation’s history with the land before it was opened to non-Indian settlement. The Cherokee had used the Outlet in part as valuable grazing country, leasing grasslands to cattlemen moving Texas cattle toward Kansas railroads. Railroads, cattle interests, settlers and federal officials eventually placed growing pressure on the Cherokee Nation to sell the remaining land. When the starting signal finally came, horses, wagons, trains and people on foot raced across the prairie. Yet claiming land was only the beginning. Disputes, Sooners, drought, uncertain crops and the work of building farms and communities followed after the dust settled.