#83: A Legendary Location

Centennial Land Run Monument in OKC

This has to be one of my most exciting discoveries to date! I never would have seen this, had I not been searching the internet, googling "Land Run". Stories of the Oklahoma Land Run abound. Even our own town has an interesting story of Kentucky Daisey, a woman who reportedly talked the train engineer into letting her ride on the cowcatcher of a train going into the territory which is now Guthrie. As legend goes, she jumped the train, staked her claim using her petticoat as a flag, and reboarded the train before it passed her by.




The story may or may not be true, since no one can verify the story. But it make for fascinating legend!

For those who don't know, President Harrison made a proclamation in 1889, which opened up over 2 million acres of "unassigned" land in Indian Territory and supposedly prevented anyone from entering the territory before April 22, 1889. At noon on that day, the cannons fired and over 50,000 people raced to stake their claims.




This event is known in history as the "Land Run of 1889" or "Harrison's Race." There would be other runs, but this was the defining moment in our state's history. As people settled in the territory, town sprang up and cities grew. In 1890, Congress proclaimed the unassigned lands to be named Oklahoma Territory, which is a Choctaw name, meaning "Land of the Red Man."
The Centennial Land Run Monument is a sculpture in progress by an artist named Paul Moore. The first pieces were put in place in April of 2003, and when completed in 2015, the sculpture will be 365 feet in length, stand 16 feet tall, and depict 45 land run participants. The monument will begin with a soldier and cannon and will contain 24 horses and riders, a buckboard, two covered wagons, a buggy, a sulky, a dog, and a rabbit.



For those who don't know, this is a sulky - a two-wheeled cart with only a seat for a driver.

I cannot go into detail about how the bronze scultures are made, but you can read about it here:

http://www.okc.gov/landrun/process.html

The two men seen here are from a bronze sculpture restoration company. They come out one a year, during the summer, to treat the sculptures. If I understand the process correctly, the man heats up the sculpture with a tool and coats it with wax. This protects it for another year.

The sculptures were giant!

A:

This trip was really fascinating. I had never known that this sculpture was being built, but come to find out, it had been being worked on since 2003! Now no one would know that the sculpture was back there, because it was hidden to the south of Bass Pro Shop! We found it though, and it was so amazing! There were sculptures of people that were bigger than life-size! There were probably 20 people or so, out of the 45 that was intended to be built! The full sculpture won't be done until 2015, but what they have finished now is really cool! There were people riding on horses, kids riding in wagons, dogs running, horses that were about to trample me.......... It was a really fun experience! I can't wait to see that finished product!

C:

The Land Run statues had people on horses, and I got see a dog statue, too. I learned that the Land Run was people running for the land. Nobody was running in the statues. They were all on horses.