The Lost County of Greer, Texas

In this 1890 Rand McNally map, Greer County (which is now in Oklahoma) was "claimed by the state of Texas" as "unassigned land" (University of Texas at Arlington). Find the full map at this link.

Texas likes to brag that it's big, and between 1860 and 1894, it was actually a million and a half acres larger than it is today. That's because during that interim, Texas insisted that the North Fork of the Red River was the southern boundary of Indian Territory, which meant that Texas claimed the whole corner of today's southwestern Oklahoma. And to make this claim legit, Texas founded the massive county of Greer, named for a Lieutenant Governor, in 1860.

Situated between the North and South forks of the Red River, bounded by the 100th Meridian, and split by the Salt Fork of the Red River, Greer County was also in the heart of the ancestral Kiowa and Comanche lands.

Texas's territorial claim was specious, to say the least. According to the 1819 Adams Onis Treaty between the U.S. and Spain, all watersheds that emptied into the Mississippi River (i.e., the Louisiana Purchase) belonged to the United States. This meant that the main channel of the Red River (the South Fork) constituted the international boundary between the US and New Spain/ Mexico/Texas. But in 1860, Texas had a lot of politicians on its side, meaning that there weren't a lot of people in power ready to dispute the state's claims to Greer. The federal government even legitimized the claim by creating a new federal judicial district that included Greer County, Texas. However, by the 1880s, several senators and federal agencies had begun viewing Texas's claims as fraudulent.

Several historical events led to the dissolution of Greer County. A major reason was the end of the Red River Wars (1871 to 1875), which provided Texas the opportunity to push the southern plains tribes into Indian Territory and out of Texas. The federal government carved a reservation for the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches from their own territorial claims, which were also the western reaches of lands claimed by the Chickasaws via earlier treaty with the Choctaws, but which the US confiscated after the Civil War. A large chunk of this land was in Greer County, Texas.

The tribes leased large parts of their lands to ranchers, many of whom settled in Greer County. Both the tribes and the ranchers profited from this arrangement. Texas farmers, however, believed these deals to be detrimental to building the land into "useful" agricultural pursuits. The populist farmers movements of the 1880s and 1890s urged their politicians to intervene: open the land to agricultural settlement, remove the cattle barons, and force the Indians to become "civilized." In 1886, Congress authorized a commission to settle the questions surrounding the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma. After the commission didn't draw any conclusions, the U.S. filed suit. In United States v. Texas (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Greer County, Texas should be Greer County, Oklahoma Territory (Oklahoma Territory was founded in 1890 through the Organic Act in preparation for eventual statehood).

The San Marcos Free Press wrote in 1886 that Greer County's allegiance would be decided by Congress.

The Galveston Daily News wrote about how the "land barons" in Greer County have taken exclusive use of the land (1886).

To protect Texas constituents who lived in Greer County from dispossession, Congress set up homesteads in the newly established Greer County, O.T. This allowed the ranchers and settlers who were already living in Greer County, Texas at the time of the verdict to keep their claims for a filing fee, and they even had first dibs to new lands that became available in Greer County, O.T. through the land lotteries.

Kiowas, Apaches, and Comanches did not have that option. They lost all rights to the lands except for the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservation, which was also homesteaded during this period. Much of their reservation was carved into homesteads granted to Texas farmers by the Dawes allotment lotteries at the turn of the 20th century. This area was deemed "the BIg Pasture" by Texans, who swarmed into Oklahoma to take the lands and build cotton farms.

Still by 1900, land claims and homesteads for non-native settlers to Greer County (nee Texas) were still being sorted out (Austin American Statesman).