USA > Oklahoma > Oklahoma County > Oklahoma City > The story of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma : "the biggest little city in the world" > Part 19
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Senator Campbell Russell's resolution providing for the appointment of a joint commission of fourteen members of the Senate and House to prepare a bill touching the subject of the capital location was adopted by the Senate January 11. In substance the measure contemplated carrying out the New Jerusalem plan which had been approved in the election of 1908. The Oklahoma City capital organization had been kept intact and it employed Prof. Henry Meier of the State Uni- versity to determine what was the exact geographical center of the state. On January 22. Professor Meier reported that he had found the center to be two and a quarter miles east and one and a quarter miles north of the town of Britton, and in the southwest quarter of section 23-12n-3e.
In February Senator Russell himself prepared the sort of a bill he would have had prepared by a commission. It provided for the appointment of a commission of five to make selections and secure options on not less than sixteen nor more than thirty-six sections of land not more than fifty miles from the center of the state to be used for capital pur- poses. It provided for the issuance of bonds for building purposes that were to be retired out of the proceeds of land sales, and that the commission should make its report by JJuly 1, 1909, and the governor was directed to call an election for a date not later than August 1, 1909. This bill was passed by the Senate on March 2.
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The local capital organization proceeded to the preparation of a bill of its own. H. A. Johnson was chairman of the drafting committee. The measure was completed by May 1 and petitions asking for an election were put in circulation. It contained some of the features of the Russell bill but it provided that the capital lands should be within five miles of an established town and for the securing of options on not to exceed 2,000 acres of land, out of the sale of part of which funds were to be derived to reimburse the state for an initial capitol-building appropriation. It proposed to amend the constitution to remove the inhibition created by the Enabling Aet against removal of the capital before 1913, and provided for the creation of a capital commission of three members Petitions were filed with the secretary of state on July 28. A Guthrie capital organization sought to restrain the secretary of state from calling an election under the initiative law, and on August 14, W. A. Ledbetter, representing the local or- ganization, applied to the Supreme Court for an order pro- hibiting District Judge A. H. Huston of Guthrie from interfering with the secretary of state. Leo Meyer, acting secretary of state, asked that a hearing be held as to the legality and sufficiency of the petition.
And while these events were transpiring, I. M. Putnam, an Oklahoma City real estate dealer, who as a member of the first state Legislature, had introduced a capital-removal meas- ure, believing that eventually the capital would be located on a virgin spot near an established town, began acquiring lands northwest of Oklahoma City. Putnam's was one of the most dramatie speculations in the history of the Southwest. On September 11, he paid or contracted to pay Henry Schaffer of El Reno and J. W. Maney of Oklahoma City $266,000 for 1,028 aeres of land between the Putnam Heights Addition and a site some miles to the west for a suburban town he had tentatively named Oklacadian, on a proposed interurban ex- tension. Previously Putnam had bought 800 aeres in that vicinity for $251,000. The name of the projected "model city" later was changed to Putnam City. The traets were platted, streets marked and named, trees planted. buildings erected and other improvements made, and Mr. Putnam had the pleasure on November 6 of welcoming there the first inter- Vol. I-21
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urban ear rim by the Oklahoma Railway Company over a line that was building to El Reno.
Profiting by the defeat of a proposed, city charter in the previous year, representative men, still desirous of municipal reforms, this year initiated another movement toward con- struction and adoption of a charter. The movement had its inception in a Good Government League of which, early in the year, Dr. A. K. West was president. Doctor West retired. however, before the campaign started and was succeeded by J. M. Bass and he a few weeks later by R. A. Kleinschmidt. President W. T. Corder of the city council, in the absence of Mayor Scales, on November 7, issued a call for an election to be held December 6 for the selection of a board of freeholders to draft a charter. The freeholders elected were George K. Williams, Dr. C. B. Bradford, J. H. Everest, Henry G. Sny- der, Thomas H. Harper, John W. Stevens, J. C. Johnson. J. M. McCornack, Loyal J. Miller and Samuel Murphy.
The Eighty-niners Association held a celebration on opening day that was a little more ambitious than on former anniversaries, staging a parade and executing a program at Delmar Garden. In the parade appeared Belle Cunningham. the first white child born in Oklahoma, and George Stiles carried the first flag that floated in the new city. Addresses were delivered by Dr. A. C. Scott and E. D. Cameron, state superintendent of education. A committee consisting of J. A. J. Baugus, Sidney Clarke and J. W. Johnson was ap- pointed to draft a bill to be presented to the Legislature pro- viding that April 22 should be a legal holiday throughout the state. O. A. Mitscher was reelected president of the associa- tion. A. D. Marble, vice president, J. A. J. Baugus, secretary, and Mrs. Fred Sutton, treasurer.
On June 19 of this year occurred the death of Sidney Clarke, a member of the Eighty-niners Association and one of the ablest of Oklahoma pioneers. He had been a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Lincoln had given him a commission in the army. He had served three terms in Congress from Kansas and was a friend and advisor of Capt. David Payne and Capt. W. L. Couch, the original boomer leaders. He was a native of Massachusetts, having been born in Southbridge in 1831. For five years he was editor of the
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Southbridge Press, and in 1885 he was commissioned by the Chicago Tribune to accompany General Sheridan to Fort Reno to settle some incipient Indian troubles. Prior to that, however, he had settled in Lawrence, Kan., and from his district was elected to the state Legislature in 1858. He was elected to Congress in 1864 and reelected twice thereafter. He was defeated for reelection in 1870 and in 1878 was a can- didate for the United States Senate. He came to Oklahoma at the time of the opening and was one of the founders of the city goverment. His was a trained and logical mind and he had the temperament and capacity of a safe and useful leader. At his funeral, orations were delivered by Dr. A. C. Scott and the Rev. Thomas H. Harper.
Interests represented by L. E. Patterson, which had con- structed a section of street railroad and contemplated an interurban line to Shawnee, were granted a franchise in the April election that apparently paved the way for an entrance to the business district. These interests were merged on November 11 with interests represented by Homer S. Hurst of Holdenville and out of the merger grew the Citizens Trac- tion Company, which was organized with a capital stock of $300,000, and of which L. E. Patterson, H. S. Hurst, W. F. Harn, J. F. Winans and Alfred Hare, the latter of Shawnee, were elected directors. The merger came about through the Hurst interests blocking the route of the Patterson interests east from MeNabb Park and the Patterson interests block- ing the way of the Hurst interests to an Oklahoma City ter- minal.
Other events of the year included the organization of the permanent Oklahoma Municipal League, of which Mayor Scales was elected president and City Attorney W. R. Taylor, chairman of the executive and legislative committee: the or- ganization of the Men's Dinner Club, of which C. B. Ames was elected president, H. G. Snyder, secretary, and Dr. A. C. Scott, Dr. A. K. West, Dr. George Bradford, Judge George W. Clark, D. W. Hogan and JJ. C. Clark, members of the exec- utive committee: a visit of Jolm W. Gates, who purposed building a railroad from Oklahoma City to Wichita Falls, but who announced that he was deterred by a constitutional provision that forbade the sale of a new railroad to an estab-
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lished railroad company operating in the state; the granting of a new twenty-five-year franchise to the Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company; establishment of the Tradesmen's Bank with a capital of $50,000, of which Frank Wikoff was elected president, J. C. MeClelland, vice president, and J. E. Mundell, cashier : the organization of a Board of Trade, of which Buran Honse was elected president, R. H. Drennan, vice president, and Major Moberly, secretary ; the death, September 4, of Dr. Daniel Munger, the first physician to open an office in the city : the circulation of a petition by an organization headed by Dorset Carter, and of which A. L. Walker of Waurika was secretary, asking for an election to eliminate from the constitution that article objectionable to railroad promoters; completion of the Great White Way on Main Street, which was celebrated with speeches by H. Y. Thompson, W. T. Corder, Seymour Heyman and J. F. Harbour, the latter being credited with being the father of the lighting movement ; and the organization of the Oklahoma Methodist College, of which Dr. A. C. Enochs was elected president, the Rev. Frank Bar- rett, vice president, W. W. Robertson, secretary, Dr. J. M. Bostelle, treasurer, and Dr. N. L. Linebaugh, superintendent of construction and the sale of lots, whereby funds were to be obtained for building purposes on a site selected two miles north of Britton.
Leslie's Weekly published an article written by Sidney L. Brock, entitled "The Truth About Oklahoma," from which the following two paragraphs are taken :
"As the result of the follow-up correspondence campaign of the Chamber of Commerce in 1908 and 1909, placing before the great packers information of the production, source of origin and destination of live stock shipments from Okla- homa, and the advantages of Oklahoma as a suitable place for the establishment of a packing plant, negotiations were opened with Morris & Company of Chicago. Their representative looked over the field, quietly secured options on a large tract close to the city and then called on the writer with a view to closing the deal with our Chamber of Commerce. In company with one trusted associate, a tentative agreement was made. guaranteeing on the part of the packers the establishment of
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a great live stock market. The citizens of Oklahoma City, on the other hand, were to pay the packers a cash bonus of $300,- 000 and grant other reasonable and necessary specified con- ditions in relation to sewer connections, water and gas ex- tensions and exemption from taxation for a five year term.
"How to get the cash bonus was the question. The writer and his associate, George B. Stone, hit upon this plan: The packers were indneed to accept half the bonus when the plant should be ready for operation and the balance a year from that date. Their representative consented to no publicity till we gave the word. Options on 575 acres of land were secured, the best land adjoining and overlooking the packing district from the south, and all within the three mile limit of the center of Oklahoma City, the cost of the land being $184,000. Three tedious days saw the options in our hands: then the directors of the Chamber were called in and needless to say quickly ratified the tentative agreement. The Oklahoma Industrial Company was planned, with a capitalization of $400,000, to finance the proposition and guarantee the bons. At a mass meeting on the 19th of May at 10 o'clock the Assembly Hall could not contain the multitude. The announcement of the securing of the Morris proposition was made and the plans were laid before the assemblage for financing it, and the state- ment was made, 'it is up to you to make good and secure this great enterprise.' Did they respond ? Four hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars were subscribed in an hour and thirty minutes amid great cheering and enthusiastic ad- dresses, all of one tone-that of approval and hearty coopera- tion. The packers began to build and the land company to plot and to sell. In the year's time nearly $700,000 worth of lots had been sold and 2,000 out of the original 44,000 lots were still on hand."
In reviewing this achievement which meant so much to the future welfare and development of Oklahoma City. the Daily Oklahoman paid Mr. Brock and his associates the fol- lowing editorial tribute : "Not everyone knows the tremendous efforts which were put forth by Mr. Brock and Mr. Stone. Not everybody knows that Sidney Brock rifled the bank account of his big dry goods store and took out $25,000 of his own money with which to purchase options which would be necessary to
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insure the location of the big plant in Oklahoma City. He did this without any guarantee that one dollar would be re- funded to him in case he lost and the Morris Company decided to locate elsewhere. He did it without hope of one cent of profit to himself other than the indirect benefit of the location of the packing plant here. One city in a thousand ean pro- duce men of the spirit and caliber of Sidney Brock and George Stone. And any community which is fortunate enough to claim citizens who are ready and willing to stake a large part of their fortune on the hazard of greatly benefiting their town can never go backward."
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1910-THE CAPITAL ACHIEVED
By an incontestable majority the people of the state on June 11, 1910, approved of the Oklahoma City capital bill. The returns were so patently indicative of the outcome that long before the official count was made Governor Haskell unofficially made declaration of the result and moved his office force and part of his records from Guthrie and estab- lished himself in the Huckins Hotel. By night the great seal of the state was secretly brought to the metropolis. The morning after the election, when the Guthrie committee was considering a legal blocking procedure, the governor indicted a letter to Judge J. H. Burford, counsel for the committee, in . which he advised that if the committee desired to serve him in the name of the law he could be found in his hotel office in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma City postponed plans for its campaign until after it had negotiated a contract for the location of a second $3,000,000 packing plant and successfully waged a campaign for the issuance of $660,000 of bonds for public improvements. The bonds carried by a substantial majority on April 5, and of the amount, $300,000 was for schools, $150,000 for improv- ing the fire department, $10,000 for establishing a fire alarm system and $200,000 for purchasing Delmar Garden and im- proving the channel of the Canadian River.
Governor Haskell on March 27, being convinced that the Oklahoma City capital committee had complied with the law relating to the initiation of bills and of the sufficiency of the petition filed with the secretary of state, issued a call for an election on June 11. The petition contained nearly twenty- eight thousand names and they were of residents of a ma- jority of the counties of the state. On April 5, 1,500 persons attended the first capital mass meeting. presided over by Sid- ney L. Brock and a campaign committee was appointed with E. K. Gaylord as chairman. Acting on advice of Governor
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Haskell, who, it should be noted, was from the ontset in favor of the Oklahoma City measure and of the location of the capital here, but who adroitly manifested a more or less impartial attitude, the committee on May 20 appointed a sub-committee to prepare legal options on capitol lands and another committee to secure options. The first committee was composed of J. H. Everest, C. B. Ames and W. A. Ledbetter. and the second of C. F. Coleord, Henry Overholser, S. L. Brock, F. P. Johnson and W. L. Alexander. At the same time Chairman Gaylord sent a challenge to Senator Campbell Russell to debate the issue jointly with Judge E. S. Hurt of Madill who had been employed by the committee for that purpose, Russell meanwhile having initiated a New Jerusa- lem bill to be submitted in the November election. Senator Russell accepted the challenge and one of the outstanding features of the campaign was this series of joint debates.
On the 1st day of June the options committee submitted to Governor Haskell four propositions. The first of them was that 1,380 acres of land northeast of the city could be obtained for $275,000 and 800 acres additional without cost. The second was made by I. M. Putnam, who meantime had invested $200,- 000 in a quarter-section of land in the vicinity of Putnam City. making the total of his investments there nearly $750,000. His proposition was that for and in consideration of $1 he would deliver to the state 2,000 acres of land near Putnam City. The third was that 800 acres of land could be had for $36.50 an are about 216 miles south of the city. The fourth called for the expenditure of $250 an acre for 1,500 acres cast of the city.
This report actuated the committees at Guthrie and Shaw- nee to move more definitely toward a site and acreage vantage point, and within a few days each submitted to the governor a proposition.
The campaign necessarily was carried into every com- munity of the state. While the Oklahoma City committee and other organizations and the ministers in the pulpits com- seled fair play and an honest election, and while there is no doubt that in a general way it was as clean a fight as over was made by a municipality, strategy and treachery and acri- mony were indulged in to an extent by all three of the com-
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mittees of applicant cities. The majority for Oklahoma City was over thirty thousand. The victory was celebrated at the State Fair Park on June 15. Fifteen thousand persons par- ticipated and the principal address was made by Governor Haskell. The following day the governor issued his procla- mation declaring Oklahoma City the capital. Already the Guthrie committee had secured an injunction in the District Court forbidding other state officials from moving to Okla- homa City. The committee appealed also to United States Judge Ralph Campbell but he dismissed the petition, hold- ing that he was without jurisdiction. Another appeal went from Guthrie to the President and immediately Attorney General West asked for a conference with United States At- torney General Wickersham. Governor Haskell made the next move by applying to the Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition against the interference of District Judge Huston of Logan County. The Supreme Court, four weeks later, in an opinion written by Justice R. L. Williams held that nothing in the constitution forbade the governor maintaining his office at any place in the state but denied the right of other state officials to maintain their offices elsewhere than in the capital, which the court indicated had not been legally removed from Guthrie.
The governor, however, proceeded with plans for carrying out the will of the people. He appointed a capital commis- sion consisting of Dr. Leo Bennett of Muskogee, J. B. A. Robertson of Chandler and Tate Brady of Tulsa. B. S. Ut- terback was chosen secretary of the commission. Robertson resigned a short time later and his place was taken by Boone Williams of Lehigh, who had been a member of the constitu- tional convention. On August 23 the commission announeed its acceptance of the offer of the Putnam tract. It employed Dr. Charles N. Gould of the State University to make a sur- vey relating to water supply and drainage, and arranged with George E. Kessler, a landscape architect, to make preliminary plans for landscaping the capital block.
Another case contesting the legality of the June 11 elec- tion having reached the Supreme Court, that tribunal on No- vember 15 issued an opinion declaring void that provision of the Enabling Act relating to the temporary location of the
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capital and asserting that the people of the state had pow .. r and authority to locate the capital for themselves. This opin- ion did not uphold the JJune 11 election, and Governor Haskell issued a call for an extraordinary session of the Legislatine to enact a law definitely and permanently locating the seat of government. The Legislature was convened on November 28 and immediately both houses ratified the call of the excell- tive. In due time a bill was introduced in the House known as the Durant-Thompson bill providing that Oklahoma City should be declared the permanent state capital. The bill was passed by the House after the name of Dan Peery of Carnegie had been hyphenated into the title. Since Mr. Peery a : a member of the first Territorial Legislature had been the first man to suggest Oklahoma City as the capital, as has been told by the late F. S. Barde in another part of this history, that distinguished pioneer was gratified by the honor of hav- ing a part in making the last legislative contribution to the subject.
In the Senate a bill was introduced by Senator J. B. Thompson of Pauls Valley providing for the sale of certain traets of state school land north of the city for capital pur- poses. This bill was reported to have been sanctioned by the governor. On December 8, Senator Thompson, chairman of the capital committee, addressed a letter to "the people of the state of Oklahoma" in which he asserted that no bill would be reported favorably or passed by the Legislature until that body had been given positive and substantial assurance that the people of the state, by virtue of the act, were to receive a capital without cost to them. The Oklahoma City commit- tee again went into action. It was advised that the senator was speaking for others also in high authority and it was convinced that the Putnam site would be abandoned and an- other selected nearer to, and in a northeasterly direction from. the city. Whereupon it secured options on tracts to the northeast. and on December 14 the Senate passed a resolution accepting the offer of a site at the intersection of Twenty- third Street and Lincoln Boulevard. When this resolution reached the House, which had eraved the honor of initiating capital legislation, that body promptly tabled it. Conferences led to an early amicable settlement of minor disputes and the
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measure was adopted by the House and duly signed and ap- proved by Speaker W. B. Anthony.
With the issue thus definitely settled, with Oklahoma City almost beyond peradventure the permanent capital of the state, the capital committee then reorganized its forces to assist state officials and the Capital Commission in prelimi- nary steps for construction of a building. The first step was the organization of the Capital Building Company, of which C. G. Jones was elected temporary president and Orin Ashton temporary secretary. Temporary directors were Henry Over- holser, C. F. Colcord, C. G. Jones, W. F. Harn, J. J. Cul- bertson, K. W. Dawson, Edward S. Vaught, O. J. Johnson, E. F. Sparrow, S. L. Brock and O. G. Lee.
The historic performance of the previous year respecting the establishment of a packing plant, the boosters were called upon to repeat on February 1 of this year. On that date a definite proposal was received by the Chamber of Commerce from the Schwarzchild & Sulzberger Packing Company. It asked for a cash bonus of $300,000, water, sewer and gas main extensions to the building site, a fire station near the site, and free water to the amount of 350,000 gallons daily for five years. A committee consisting of Weston Atwood, O. G. Lee, Seymour Heyman, John Shartel and William Mee was appointed to consider the proposal. It learned shortly that the Delmar Garden tract was available for subdivision pur- poses, the tract at that time being owned by the Parkside Realty Company, composed of C. F. Colcord. J. R. Keaton. John Sinopoulo and John Marre. Part of it was under lease to the baseball association. The tract consisted of 164 acres and was offered to the Packinghouse Development Company, which was formed shortly thereafter, for $250,000. A traet of fifty acres adjoining was offered for $95,000 by J. S. Carle. J. A. J. Baugus, who owned 128 acres near the park on the west, offered the company the proceeds of sales above a net price to him of $1,900 an acre.
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