The Great Land Run of Oklahoma commenced at twelve o’clock noon on September 16, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety three. More than one hundred thousand people poured across the border that day into what is known as the Cherokee Strip. It is the stuff of which great movies are made. In a single day Alva grew from an open prairie to a town of several hundred people.
While this is the stuff of epic stories, the reality of life on the prairie was far less spectacular and romantic. Imagine, as one parishioner described, a family driving into town in their horse and wagon rig and seeing heads popping up out of the ground from their dugouts to see who was passing by. Civilization may have progressed a great way from the days of the nomadic wanderings of the Israelites, but archeologists have discovered running water and flush toilets in cities dating back to Abraham. People in northwest Oklahoma had only the privy out back. Men, women, and families had to reach down and steady themselves for the great challenge ahead. Our forebearers in this part of the country were rugged people indeed.
The settlers who would found Zion Lutheran Church – Alva generally did not frantically invade the territory during the Land Run, but slowly filtered into the area, looking over fields and lands carefully and only then deciding where to live permanently and purchasing homesteads. They had a good eye for land and many of them settled in an area just east of Alva, which to this day is heavily populated by Lutherans. Many of these individuals and families were first generation immigrants. They came to these United States, most of them stopping elsewhere first before coming to northwest Oklahoma. People went either to where they had family and relations, or else boldly came to settle as strangers in a strange land. Opportunities for land abounded in the expanding west and brave families answered the call.[1]
Notes
- Zion Lutheran Church – Alva, Oklahoma 100 year celebration booklet “Zion Lutheran Church 1899-1999 Alva, OK”. 1999.