The Oklahoma panhandle (formerly called No Man's Land, the Public Land Strip, the Neutral Strip, or Cimarron Territory) is a salient in the extreme northwestern region of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Its constituent counties are, from west to east, Cimarron, Texas and Beaver. As with other salients in the United States, its name comes from the similarity of its shape to the handle of a pan. Its largest city is Guymon in Texas County. Black Mesa State Park, located in Cimarron County, is the highest point in the state. Other points of interest include Beaver Dunes Park, Optima Lake, and the Optima National Wildlife Refuge. Oklahoma Panhandle State University is located in Goodwell.

Paleo-Indian people settled in the region around 8450 BCE. Native American horticulturists inhabited the region before the European colonists arrived in the 16th century. The area became part of New Spain with the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which set the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase at the 100th meridian. The outcome of the Mexican War of Independence made the panhandle a part of Mexico in 1821. The area was part of the Texas Republic from its formation in 1836 until Texas became part of the United States in 1846, which left the area federal property. The area was incorporated into Oklahoma Territory and later split into three counties when Oklahoma obtained statehood in 1907.

As of the 2020 United States census, the region has a population of 28,729, and Texas County is the only county in Oklahoma to have a plurality of Hispanic residents, which make up 48.1 percent of the county's population. Its economy is primarily agricultural, and its political elections sway in favor of the Republican Party.

Geography

thumb|200 px|State welcome sign on the New Mexico state line of the panhandle

The panhandle, long and wide, is bordered by Kansas and Colorado at 37°N on the north, New Mexico at 103°W on the west, Texas at 36.5°N on the south, and the remainder of Oklahoma at 100°W on the east.

The largest town in the region is Guymon, which is the county seat of Texas County. Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma at , is located in Cimarron County. The panhandle occupies nearly all of the true High Plains within Oklahoma, being the only part of the state lying west of the 100th meridian, which generally marks the westernmost extent of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The North Canadian River is named Beaver River or Beaver Creek on its course through the panhandle. Its land area is which is 8.28 percent of Oklahoma's land area. The area includes Beaver Dunes Park with sand dunes along the Beaver River and Optima Lake, the home of the Optima National Wildlife Refuge.

Unlike most of Oklahoma, the panhandle is not in the Sun Belt. The Kinder Institute defines the Sun Belt as areas south of 36°30'N latitude, which is the southern border of the panhandle.

History

thumb|Map of Oklahoma Territory, Indian Territory and the "neutral strip"

thumb|The 1845 [[Texas annexation included the area of the future Oklahoma panhandle.]]

thumb|No Man's Land Monument, U.S. Highway 64 east of [[Gate, Oklahoma|Gate (Oklahoma panhandle)]]

What is now the Oklahoma panhandle has been occupied for millennia. The Paleo-Indian people of the region were part of the Beaver River complex. A Paleo-Indian encampment, the Bull Creek site, dates back to approximately 8450 BCE, and the Badger Hole site dates to circa 8400 BCE.

Shortly before the arrival of European explorers, the panhandle was home to Southern Plains villagers. From 1200 to 1500, the semi-sedentary panhandle culture peoples, including the Antelope Creek phase, lived in the region in large, stone-slab and plaster houses in villages or individual homesteads. As horticulturists, they farmed maize and indigenous crops from the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Several Antelope Creek phase sites were founded near present-day Guymon, including the McGrath, Stamper and Two Sisters sites.

The Cimarron Cutoff for the Santa Fe Trail passed through the area soon after the trade route was established in 1826 between the Mexicans in Santa Fe and the Americans in St. Louis. The route was increasingly used during the California Gold Rush. The cutoff passed several miles north of what are now Boise City, Oklahoma, and Clayton, New Mexico, before continuing toward Santa Fe.

When Texas sought to enter the Union in 1845 as a slave state, federal law in the United States, based on the Missouri Compromise, prohibited slavery north of 36°30' north latitude. Under the Compromise of 1850, Texas surrendered its lands north of 36°30', rather than have a portion of the state as "free" territory. The 170-mile strip of land, a "neutral strip", was left with no state or territorial ownership from 1850 until 1890. It was officially called the "Public Land Strip" and was commonly referred to as "No Man's Land."

The Compromise of 1850 also established the eastern boundary of New Mexico Territory at the 103rd meridian, thus setting the western boundary of the strip. The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 set the southern border of Kansas Territory as the 37th parallel. This became the northern boundary of "No Man's Land." When Kansas joined the Union in 1861, the western part of Kansas Territory was assigned to the Colorado Territory but did not change the boundary of "No Man's Land." In 1886, Interior Secretary L. Q. C. Lamar declared the area to be public domain and subject to "squatter's rights".

The strip was not yet surveyed, and as that was one of the requirements of the Homestead Act of 1862, the land could not be officially settled. Settlers by the thousands flooded in to assert their "squatter's rights" anyway. They surveyed their own land and by September 1886 had organized a self-governing and self-policing jurisdiction, which they named the Cimarron Territory. Senator Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana introduced a bill in Congress to attach the so-called territory to Kansas. It passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives but was not signed by President Grover Cleveland.

The elected council met as planned, elected Owen G. Chase as president, and named a full cabinet. They also enacted further laws and divided the strip into five counties (Benton, Beaver, Palo Duro, Optima, and Sunset), three senatorial districts (with three members from each district), and seven delegate districts (with two members from each district). The members from these districts were to be the legislative body for the proposed territory. Elections were held November 8, 1887, and the legislature met for the first time on December 5, 1887. A group disputing the Chase organization met and elected and sent its own delegate to Washington. A bill was introduced to accept Chase but was never brought to a vote. Neither delegation was able to persuade Congress to accept the new territory. The passage of the Organic Act in 1890 assigned Public Land Strip to the new Oklahoma Territory, and ended the short-lived Cimarron Territory aspirations.

Dust Bowl

The panhandle was severely affected by the drought of the 1930s. The drought began in 1932 and created massive dust storms. By 1935, the area was widely known as being part of the Dust Bowl. The dust storms were largely a result of poor farming techniques and the plowing up of the native grasses that had held the fine soil in place. Despite government efforts to implement conservation measures and change the basic farming methods of the region, the Dust Bowl persisted for nearly a decade. It contributed significantly to the length of the Great Depression in the United States. Each of the three counties experienced a major loss of population during the 1930s.

The social impact of the dust bowl and the resulting emigration of tenant farmers from Oklahoma is the setting for the 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck.

Demographics

As of the 2010 census, there were a total of 28,751 people, 10,451 households, and 7,466 families in the three counties that comprise the Oklahoma panhandle. The racial makeup of the region was 80.26% white (including persons of mixed race), 59.46% non-Hispanic white, 1.34% African American, 1.21% Native American, 1.18% Asian, 0.12% Pacific Islander, 15.53% from other races, and 2.78% from two or more races.

Politics

The Oklahoma panhandle is one of the most universally Republican areas of what has become one of the most Republican states in the nation. Beaver and Texas counties last supported a Democrat for president in 1948, while Cimarron County last supported a Democrat in 1976. In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the three counties gave a weighted average of 86.1% of their votes to Donald Trump and 12.3% to Kamala Harris, with Trump carrying the state over Harris 66.2% to 31.9%.