Had a random youtube video show up in my suggestions and found it interesting. Virgil Earp (nephew of Wyatt Earp) answers a series of questions about life in the 1800's in a trivia game. Generally an interesting watch, and impressive memory from an 80 year old, but I noticed a map shown that caught my eye. At the 3:20 mark of the video, they show a map of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and "Territory" with overlapping lines around the west end of the now Oklahoma panhandle. Is there any history behind that particular area of overlap? Below is the link.
It existed but that map has the shape wrong.?ÿ I'm looking at a book by Bill Hubbard, Jr. called American Boundaries. His map (p.159) does show a box, with a less tall shape and the full width of the Texas panhandle.?ÿ He says that as Congress extended the 37th parallel and set the longitude of territories,
"the result was that the strip of land north of the Texas Panhandle, between 37?ø and 36?ø 30' was left in no jurisdiction at all. The federal government would come to call this anomalous tract the Public Land Strip, but it was more commonly known as No Man's Land, and would remain ungoverned until incorporated into a new Oklahoma Territory in 1890."
@bill93?ÿ
Thank you for the detailed response. I saw in maps around that time of the whole panhandle area being No Man's Land, but didn't see the small square as shown in the video. I had a feeling the map in the show was wrong, but was wondering if someone with more knowledge than I, such as yourself could confirm.
Slavery was banned north of the latitude matching the north boundary of the Texas Panhanle.?ÿ The southern boundary of Kansas Territory had already been fixed.?ÿ That Territory included all of what is now Kansas and a large part of what is now Colorado, including what became Denver, so-named for
?ÿ
Great little history lesson. ?ÿSitting here with my 11 year old daughter as we watched. ?ÿShe has a new wrinkle in her brain and me too. ?ÿ
