This sepia colored photograph shows a "Boomer" camp on the banks of the Walnut River in Arkansas City, Kansas. The "Boomers" were white settlers who were attempting to settle in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Some of the "Boomers" would camp near the Kansas Oklahoma border waiting to enter the territory to claim land that had not been assigned to Indian Tribes and was believed to be in the public domain under the Homestead Act of 1862. The land in question was some of the last few sections of lands set aside by the U.S. Government for the Native American tribes who had been removed from their ancestral lands in other parts of the U.S.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Boomer camp on Walnut River, Arkansas City, Kansas