Lane Cabin

So long as buffaloes roamed the arid section of the Southern Plains now known as the Oklahoma Panhandle, along with the various Indian tribes that lived off them, the region remained virtually uninhabited. Then around 1875, with the disappearance of the buffaloes and confinement of the Indians to reservations, cattlemen began to move in. And around 1885, as free land became increasingly scarce and word of the grass-rich region spread, settlers followed to "squat" on the more desirable parcels of land. With cattlemen and settlers thus contending for the land, and no legal government to maintain in law and order, the situation was obviously ripe for trouble. And trouble came. In addition, No Man's Land -- and it was that, literally -- became a haven for criminals on the lam from surrounding states and territories that had no authority over this 5,738-square-mile rectangle (168 miles east-west, 34 miles north-south).

The problem had grown so serious by 1886 that various vigilante committees met to try to give the region a semblance of order and legitimacy. They organized a Respective Claim Board, divided the strip into three districts, Representatives of these districts met in Beaver City late that year, organized themselves into a deliberative body. By 1887 they had organized a territorial form of government and sent delegations to Washington to try to get Congressional approval for formation of the Territory of Cimarron. These efforts were continued, without success, until Oklahoma Territory became a fact in 1890.

Meanwhile, Beaver City itself had developed into a thriving little frontier settlement. It began in March 1880 when James Lane, a one-time cowboy, brought his family down from Dodge City and established a home and trading post where the Jones and Plummer Cattle Trail and the Tascosa Trail crossed the Beaver River. The Beaver, which drains much of the Panhandle, is known as the North Fork of the Canadian in the rest of Oklahoma.)

To Lane's house/ store ranchers of the area came for their beans, coffee, dried salt bacon, tobacco, whiskey, and cartridges. For a time he enjoyed a virtual monopoly and his business flourished. When agents for the Beaver City Town Company arrived in 1882 -- to lay out and "boom" a settlement in No Man's Land -- an oral agreement was made with Lane where by he waived his "squatter's right" to 160 acres of land in return for ownership of two blocks in the city-to-be. In the map of Beaver City as subsequently platted, two blocks are marked "Lane's Reserve."

The settlement did indeed boom. As ambitiously named Beaver City, it obtained a post office April 5, 1883. With a running start so far as organization was concerned, it naturally became the unofficial capital of Cimarron Territory and headquarters for the move to obtain legal status for it.

As word of potential home and farm sites spread to other parts of the country, of course, more and more people arrived, Jim Lane soon had competition. Four new sod houses were completed within a month of the platting of the town, Townsite agent Wm. Waddle built one of them - as a grocery. Within another month the town had twenty more "soddies" built or under construction. The first wooden structures appeared shortly. Beaver City soon had a livery stable, a saloon ... and a dance hall, the first in all No Man's Land, The town had arrived.

The Lane Cabin was later expanded. Two of the original sod rooms were incorporated into a larger house and given a new roof Stuccoed on the outside, it still stands, a residence and a pioneer museum, All of the other Beaver City "soddies" have long since disappeared. For all its lack of contemporary glamor, then, the Lane Cabin remains as the first structure in the first permanent settlement of a true western No Man's Land.