Perry, Oklahoma: The Overnight City

At noon on September sixteenth, eighteen ninety-three, a pistol shot sent tens of thousands of settlers racing across the Cherokee Outlet. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people were camped on the spot that would become Perry, Oklahoma. The Cherokee Strip Land Run was the largest of Oklahoma's four land runs, and Perry was its queen city.

Named for J. A. Perry, a government official overseeing the run, the town incorporated in just four days.

Land offices here processed a flood of homestead claims for one hundred sixty acre parcels on land the United States had purchased from the Cherokee Nation for roughly eight and a half million dollars. Today, the Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry holds the most extensive collection of original Land Run artifacts in Oklahoma.