=Collapse of the Boom, 1887.= Since the new settlers were not familiar with soil and climate conditions in Kansas many of them selected land that was not adapted to agriculture, therefore much of the farming was not profitable. In 1887 came one of the most severe drouths that was ever known in the country. The people lost confidence in Kansas and the boom collapsed. Eastern people wanted their money back, but there was nothing with which to pay them. Money could not be borrowed and mortgages were foreclosed. People who had bought property at high prices, expecting to sell at a profit, found themselves unable to sell at any price. Many who had counted themselves wealthy found their property almost valueless. Banks and business houses failed and hundreds of people were ruined. Thousands left Kansas, some of the western counties being almost abandoned. The year 1887 was followed, however, by several good crop seasons. A great deal of attention was given to the study of farm conditions, and Kansas began to make progress again.
=The Opening of Oklahoma.= In 1889 Kansas lost about 50,000 of her population. This came about through the opening of Oklahoma to settlement. The President issued a proclamation setting high noon of April 22 as the time at which the settlers could enter the new country to take claims. The opening of Oklahoma had been anxiously awaited for years, and, as the appointed time drew near, people from all parts of the United States began to assemble along the southern line of Kansas. Arkansas City was the chief gathering place, for it was at this point that the one line of railroad entered Oklahoma. When, at noon, April 22, the cavalrymen who patroled the borders fired their carbines as a signal that the settlers could move across the line, a great shout went up, and the race for claims began. Hundreds crowded the trains, thousands rode on fleet horses, many rode in buggies and buckboards, others in heavy farm wagons, and some even made the race on foot. In the morning Oklahoma was an uninhabited prairie, at midday it was a surging mass of earnest, excited humanity, in the evening it was a land of many people. Within a few days the breaking plow was turning the sod on many homesteads, while merchants, bankers, and professional men were carrying on their business in tents or in rough board shanties. The rush of settlement to Kansas was remarkable, but the settlement of Oklahoma is the climax in the story of American pioneering. Although Kansas furnished such a large number of the Oklahoma settlers, immigration to our State from the East soon made up the loss.