At the time of the Oklahoma land run (April 22, 1889), married women could not own land in the Twin Territories. Everything a married woman owned, including herself, belonged to her husband. So only the strongest and most resourceful females dared take their place along the start line.

The maidens who had packed their bags and wagons were surrounded by men on horses and bicycles, men on foot and in wagons, and families clinging to buckboards. Since the run took place on the Monday following Easter Sunday, the ladies organized church services and conducted baptisms in the creeks and rivers that surrounded the lush green prairie. They played their fiddles for square dancers and kept baseball scores for games which lasted until night pulled her springtime blanket over the sky. During the dark of night, surely they stared into the campfires and wondered what the future held for them in the land they were about to claim as their own.

Many a lady realized only when she got to the starting line (which extended for over three hundred miles around an area of land shaped like a deflated football) that land run mean just that—run, on your feet if that happened to be the only method of transportation you had. In competition with race horses that sold for as much as $500, what was a lady to do?

A clever lass from Missouri took one look at the situation and immediately devised the answer to her problem. The way she saw it, the land just one step into the territory was up for grabs just the same as the land in the middle of the three million acres. So when the guns were shot at noon, she took one step forward, drove her stake into the ground, scribbled “twelve o’one” on it, and became the first person to claim land in what would 18 years later become the grand and glorious state of Oklahoma.

Another lady, Kentucky Daisey, became immortal by riding a cowcatcher (the rails at the front of a train, designed to push slow-moving bovine off the tracks) on the first train to traverse the territories that day. Daisey was a newspaper reporter who needed to file a story when the train reached Purcell, but she was not about to let the opportunity to own a farm pass her by. So when she got to the land she wanted, she jumped off the train, drove her stake into the ground, shot off the two pistols she was packing, and shook her golden hair in triumph. Then, as pre-arranged, a friend who was riding in the caboose grabbed her from the ground and swung her back onto the train.

The next time you visit the Oklahoma State Capitol building, look for Daisey in Charles Banks Wilson’s wonderful land run mural and give a nod to these, and other, brave women who founded our state.

Molly Levite-Griffis was born in Apache, Oklahoma, the setting for four of her seven award-winning books. Her newest book, Simon Says (Eakin Press, $22.95), received the Oklahoma Book Award in the Young Adults category by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Look for it in bookstores now. The mother of two grown children, she is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and lives in Norman. Visit her online at www.MollyGriffis.com.