Skabewis

By David Dary
Norman, Oklahoma (AP)

Oklahoma evolved like a patchwork quilt. In the language of quilters, it is a “crazy quilt” that developed without much design. One example is the story of the Oklahoma Panhandle.

The history of the Oklahoma Panhandle has its roots to the Compromise of 1850 and in 1845 when Texas became a state. The U.S. then acquired a vast amount of territory that Texas had claimed since its days as a Republic.

When Texas joined the Union as a slave state, it agreed not to extend its sovereignty over any territory north of 36 degrees and 30 seconds north. Therefore the northern boundary of the Texas Panhandle only stretched that far north, even though as a republic Texas claimed a strip of land stretching northward into modern Wyoming.

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