A Boomer Sooner Goes South

A celebration broke out when Oklahoma Territory became an official entity 125 years ago, on May 2, 1890. But the man who may have been most responsible was not around for the party. In 1879, William Couch, a 29-year-old businessman in Wichita, Kansas, heard David Payne talk about free land in what is now Oklahoma and joined him in his cause. In the post-Civil War years, the U.S. government had taken away land from tribes that supported the Confederacy. Payne felt those unassigned lands should