Diorama: "Land Office, Guthrie - April 1889"

Created for the inaugural installations of the U.S. Department of the Interior Museum, which opened to the public in 1938, this diorama depicts the Land Office at Guthrie, Indian Territory (present-day Guthrie, Oklahoma). The scene is a specific date in time, e.g. just a few days after the first opening of two million acres of a section of Indian Territory to homesteaders at noon on April 22, 1889. Within six hours, approximately 10,000 people had settled in what would become the capital of the new Territory of Oklahoma.

At left in the foreground is a wooden clapboard building with a sign marking the "LAND OFFICE" entrance. One figure is visible inside, and ten men are gathered outside in conversation; some are more formally dressed than others—from western wear to army uniforms. At right in the foreground is a tent marked "GROCERIES/PROVISIONS/CIGARS/TOBACCO" pitched for selling supplies, including washboards, sacks of dry goods, pick axes, shovels and buckets. A man is showing the wares to two men in suits and hats. In the middle foreground is a white tent with a "POST OFFICE" sign above the flap; two men are just outside of it, while another two men in hats are standing near them in conversation. Across from the Post Office tent, four men are erecting a wooden frame for a more permanent building. Additional tents are visible receding into the painted backdrop against a clear blue sky dotted with smoke from campfires..

Spectacular scenes of this kind, where tent cities sprang up overnight, were common when large areas of land were opened to settlement under the Homestead Act.