Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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No man's land.

When Texas was annexed to the United States, in 1845, its boundaries extended nearly 35 miles farther north than the parallel 36° 30′. By the conditions of the act of Congress known as the Missouri compromise (q. v.) slavery was forbidden in all new States north of that parallel, and hence that portion of Texas could not be admitted as part of a slave State. Texas accordingly ceded it to the United States government—it being a strip of land 34 1/2 miles wide and 167 1/2 miles long. Although represented on the maps as a portion of Indian Territory, this tract of land was for more than forty years outside the jurisdiction of the courts, infested by desperadoes and refugees from justice—a veritable “no man's land” — in which no form of government existed. In 1886, however, there were 12,000 inhabitants, and an effort was made to organize it into the Territory of Cimarron, but without success. In 1890 it became a part of the Territory of Oklahoma. It embraces about 3,700,000 acres.