Veteran's History Project: The Zeek Homestead

"Section 18, Township 17, North of Range 18, West of the Indian Meridian, Oklahoma."

So reads the land description of Homestead Certificate No. 9951. My great-grandfather, Ira Zeek, was granted this piece of land by the United States of American and it was made official, after great-grandpa proved it up, on the third day of February 1908, by President Theodore Roosevelt, whose signature appears on the certificate.

In 1893, the U.S. government opened what was then known as The Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma Territory to settlement by the growing numbers of land hungry Americans. The native tribes,...