Before the Founding of Lawton
Land Lottery and Auction
Game
Teaching Materials
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Each bidder could buy one business lot and one home lot. Four government officers sat at a room-length table in the Land Office. They collected the money. Soldiers sat in chairs at each comer of Land Office. They were armed with rifles. Other soldiers patrolled the site of the sale. Theodore Maxwell of Gallup, New Mexico, bought Lot 1 in Block 1 on August 22nd. He paid $205 for his home site. |
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If you
were the highest bidder on a lot, you were escorted between ropes into
the Land Office. Then you paid for your lot.
People paid a total of $42,000 for business lots on the first day. Most people went right to work. |
They started building on their new lots by the end of the day.
"I went to the lot sale, bought a lot, made a deposit on it and went back to the bank after the remainder of the money, but the fellow I had made the deposit with was not in, and I could not be identified, and could not get the money; after searching about, I found a friend who let me have his money until I could get mine. "
August 31st was the last day of the
auction. By then, 1,422 lots had been sold. Most people paid about
$15,000 for a quarter section of land.
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