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Lawton was founded in 1901. The settlers faced hardships and danger. They were just like the Pilgrims. They had to deal with wild animals, harsh weather, and sickness. Here are two stories about this time in Lawton's history. Tarantulas, Tarantulas, Tarantulas Everywhere! A Re-Telling by Stephanie Moss Graphics by Brenda Pardon It was 1901. People held their breath. Something was about to happen that might change their lives forever! Thousands of people had registered for the Land Lottery. Some lucky people had their numbers drawn. Now it was time to file the claim and start proving up on their homesteads. But something terrible was going on! People had pitched tents, thousands of tents. The tents covered the prairie like snowflakes. People stayed in these tents while they waited to file their claims after the drawing. There were so many streets of tents that they formed a tent city. George Goodner was one of the many men living in the tents. He was one of the first men to notice that something horrible was going on! There were huge, hairy, black spiders!
Spiders as big as saucers! Fuzzy monster spiders! The spiders
were everywhere! They crawled up and down the streets. They
tiptoed on the cots in the tents. They made huge, dark shadows on
the sides of the tents! There weren't just one or two or 20 spiders.
There were millions of them!
There are still many tarantulas in Lawton today, but in 1901, there were tens and hundreds and thousands and millions of spiders! Not only did the spiders crawl, people's skin crawled, too. There were so many that the ground was covered with a moving blanket of tarantulas. People who settled Lawton had to be brave. Besides the spiders, the weather was very hot that August in 1901. The wind blew and blew. The dust flew everywhere. There was no way to shut the dust out of the tents. There were flies and scorpions and tarantulas. There were outlaws. There was very little water. The bathrooms were outhouses, and they smelled. Baths were expensive, so most people did not bathe every day. Lice got into people's beds and then crawled into their hair. It took a lot of courage to be a settler in Lawton. The Typhoid Epidemic of 1901 A Re-Telling by Stephanie Moss In the fall of 1901, people started getting sick. First one person, then another, then many more people became ill. A typhoid epidemic started in Lawton. There was no medicine at that time to cure the disease. Many people passed away. What caused the epidemic? When people first came to Lawton, they camped out in tents on the prairie. There was no running water. There were no bathrooms. There were no toilets or septic tanks or sewers. At first, people did not worry about this. They build outhouses and used them as rest rooms. Sanitation was not very important to people at first. They were too excited to worry about the little things, wondering if what their new land would look like and where it would be located. They worried about finding a place to sleep and something to eat. Septic tanks and sewers were just not too important right then. But then the fever came. Typhoid fever is caused when human wastes mix with ground water. Ground water is the water that flows into wells. People in Lawton drank the water from wells and streams. The water was contaminated. It contained tiny parts of human waste. People got very sick from typhoid fever. Many of the people died. Old people and young children died first because they were weaker. But adults died, too. Then people in town began to worry about sanitation. They knew they needed a good sewer system. The people who lived in housing areas really needed the sewer system. But the big problem was that the ground water was contaminated. Squaw Creek and Cache Creek were the main sources of water. People use the creeks for bathhouses and rest rooms. Then they drank the water from the same creeks. Even the shallow wells people dug were contaminated because the waste got into the ground water. Even when sewers were built, most of the waste from the sewers was piped into the creeks. More and more people became ill with typhoid fever. The doctors learned that contamination and lack of sanitation were the main causes of the typhoid cases. Many people who came to Lawton looking for new homes and a new life died here. Their dreams died with them. |
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