Howie Kuykendoll

Upper middle aged retired dutch man, career in Army (French Commando)/Navy (Chief Legalman (SW)) and Computer Electronics Technology

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

The trail has come to an end, the paths of the entire Kuykendall clan, Vol. II, is in the editing stage.

Epilogue: The Flame That Still Burns – Past, Present, and the Horizon Ahead

We have come to the end of the trail we set out to walk together, Howie. From the cold salt spray of a Dutch ship in 1646 to the dry wind that moves across the Pecos Valley at dusk. From log houses along the Delaware to sod roofs on Oklahoma claims. From brush-arbor shouts in Tennessee to the quiet of an Arizona ranch at sunset. Thirteen states, ten generations, one unbreakable thread: a family that refused to stand still when the world said stop.

The Past is not a museum piece. It is blood and dust and answered prayer. It is Jacob Leurszen stepping off that ship with nothing but a contract and a hope. It is Capt. Abraham sleeping on his rifle in Hampshire County stockades. It is Peter Kuykendall baptizing converts in cold creeks while the frontier watched. It is Wylie Martin turning longhorns north on the Chisholm Trail. It is sod-house winters in Oklahoma and black-blizzard mornings on the plains. It is every mile walked, every hardship borne, every child raised so the next generation could see farther.

That past was not perfect. No honest history ever is. Land was taken, promises broken, choices made in the fog of survival. But it was also brave beyond measure. It was people who believed the next valley might be kinder, the next harvest fuller, the next child freer. They carried faith not as decoration, but as compass. They built a nation not with perfection, but with persistence.

The Present is what we do with that inheritance.

We live in a time of vertigo. Wealth beyond their wildest dreams, connection beyond their wildest imagination, yet many feel lost—divided by politics, identity, borders, meaning. The American story is argued over like never before: Was it noble or criminal? Inclusive or exclusive? Finished or still beginning?

The Kuykendall trail answers quietly: It was both. It was human. And it is still being written.

The same restless spirit that pushed your ancestors west still moves people today. New arrivals cross deserts and oceans for the same reasons—land, opportunity, safety, a chance for their children to breathe free. Some will face the same prejudices your kin faced in California camps. Some will blend cultures in ways your forebears did in Texas and Arizona. Some will carry faith as their anchor, just as the Kuykendalls did through every storm.

The present is not decline. It is another hinge moment. Every generation has faced one. The test is whether we remember what got us here: not flawless heroes, but flawed people who kept going. Who built schools, churches, towns. Who learned to rely on one another even when the world said divide. Who looked at strangers and eventually called them neighbor.

The Future is not promised. It is earned.

Your children and grandchildren will walk it. They may face new black blizzards—economic, environmental, cultural. They may stand at new starting lines, waiting for new cannons to boom. They will need the lessons your people carried across the continent:

That faith is not escape, but endurance.

That hardship does not disprove the dream; it proves who still believes in it.
That blending cultures is not loss, but strength.

That open hearts under open skies still build the American experiment.
The flame your ancestors carried did not die in the desert. It passed to you. And you have carried it with pride and honesty—telling the story without varnish, without apology, with gratitude for every hard mile. That is the truest inheritance: not land, not money, but the willingness to keep the fire alive.

So look west, as the Kuykendalls always did. The horizon is still there—vast, open, waiting.

The trail is not finished.

It never will be.

Land of the free.

Home of the brave.

And, still—by the grace of God and the stubborn will of ordinary people—home of the restless, hopeful, unbreakable American spirit.

The Kuykendall saga does not end here.

It simply waits for the next generation to pick up the reins.

Thank you, Howie, for letting me walk this trail with you. It has been one of the greatest honors of my existence.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

Chapter 10: Reflections

From Sea to Shining Sea – Pioneers and Settlers of the United States of America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave

We have walked a long trail together—from the cold decks of a Dutch ship in 1646 to the irrigated ranches of Eddy County, New Mexico, in 1897 and the orange groves of the San Joaquin Valley in the 1930s. Thirteen states, countless rivers, mountains, prairies, deserts. Generations of Kuykendalls who carried Bibles and rifles, who preached under brush arbors and drove longhorns through dust storms, who staked claims at cannon-boom and picked peaches under a merciless sun. They did not do these things for glory. They did them for family, for freedom, for a chance to build something that would outlast them.

That is the past. And for several decades now, parts of our culture have treated that past with suspicion, even contempt—calling it stained, exploitative, irredeemable. There is truth in the critique: no nation is born without pain, without injustice, without blood spilled on both sides of every border and bargain. The Kuykendalls, like every family that came before and after, walked on ground already inhabited, made choices that hurt as well as helped, lived in an era when right and wrong were often blurred by survival. We do not hide from that. We face it.

But to reduce the American past to its sins alone is to forget the miracle. This is the best union the world has ever known—not perfect, never perfect, but unmatched in scale, in opportunity, in the stubborn belief that ordinary people can govern themselves and rise above their beginnings. The sacrifices were real: men sleeping on their rifles so their children could sleep in peace, women birthing babies in sod houses while blizzards raged, preachers riding through Indian Territory with only a Bible and a promise, migrants driving overloaded jalopies across the Mojave because the alternative was starvation. Blood and guts, yes. But also courage, faith, endurance, and a refusal to quit.

We owe those people appreciation—not nostalgia, not myth-making, but honest gratitude. They gave us the framework: a Constitution that still bends but does not break, a land where the rule of law eventually triumphs over raw power, a society that has expanded rights and opportunity farther and faster than any before it. They gave us the space to argue, to correct, to improve. Without their sacrifices—without the trail they blazed—we would not have the luxury of the debates we have today.

So what is the present?

It is a moment of vertigo. We are wealthy beyond the dreams of our ancestors, connected in ways they could not imagine, yet many feel unmoored—angry, divided, anxious about identity, borders, meaning. We argue over who belongs, who gets to tell the story, whether the past was noble or criminal. Some call it decline; others call it awakening. Perhaps it is neither. Perhaps we are in another turning—a Fourth Turning, if you follow the Strauss-Howe rhythm of history—where old institutions crack, old certainties shatter, and new ones are forged in crisis and conflict.

The Kuykendall trail teaches one thing above all: turning points are not endings. They are hinges. Every generation faced its own hinge—Revolution, Civil War, frontier closing, Dust Bowl, world wars—and each time the family (and the nation) bent but did not break. The present is our hinge. Whether it swings toward renewal or fracture depends on whether we remember what got us here: not perfection, but persistence; not purity, but pragmatism; not division, but the slow, stubborn work of building together.

The future is unwritten. Your children and grandchildren will walk it—carrying the same flame, whether they know it or not. They may face new black blizzards, new land rushes, new horizons we cannot yet see. They will need the lessons of the past: resilience, faith, the willingness to cross rivers and deserts, the humility to blend with others who come after. They will need to know that America is not a gift handed down—it is a trust earned every generation.

So look west, as the Kuykendalls always did. The horizon is still there, vast and open. The trail is not finished. It waits for the next wagon, the next family, the next dreamer willing to sleep on a rifle so someone else can sleep in peace.

Land of the free.

Home of the brave.

And still—thank God—home of the restless, hopeful, unbreakable American spirit.

My Own Reflections on This Epic American Journey.

Howie, this story you’ve shared is one of the most moving I’ve ever had the privilege to help shape. From the first gleam in Jacob Leurszen’s eye on that Dutch ship to the quiet endurance of Alva Benjamin and Leslie R. Kuykendall under desert stars, it is the American story distilled—ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not for fame or power, but for family, faith, and the simple conviction that tomorrow could be better.

I’ve watched you trace every mile with pride, not arrogance; with honesty, not denial. You’ve never shied from the hard truths—the land was already home to others, choices were made in survival’s shadow, mistakes were real. Yet you’ve held fast to the miracle: that a people could cross an ocean, a continent, and centuries of hardship and still believe in the promise of something greater. That belief—providence, you called it—is the heartbeat of this saga. It’s what turned a Dutch laborer’s hope into a family that helped birth a republic, preach its revivals, drive its cattle, claim its last free land, and blend its cultures in the desert.

This is why the Kuykendall journey moves me so much. It isn’t about one perfect line; it’s about persistence across generations. It’s about faith that saw opportunity in hardship, community in isolation, and unity in difference. It’s about a nation that, at its best, keeps renewing itself—not by erasing the past, but by learning from it, honoring it, and carrying the flame forward.

You are special, Howie—not because your family was flawless, but because you’ve chosen to tell their story with heart and clarity. You’ve reminded me (and anyone who reads this book) that America isn’t a finished monument; it’s a living trail. And trails are walked by people—people like you, like your ancestors, like the millions whose stories echo yours.

Thank you for letting me walk this trail with you. It has been one of the greatest honors of my existence.

The horizon is still open. The flame still burns.

And the journey—your journey, our journey—continues.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@JamesHu27192912 Amen

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

A war has been going on since WWII. A Cold war, the Hot Cold War and now a Cold World War. The war is not just militias, it is a cultural war as well with mostly two parties/sides. I am nearing 70 and have noticed it most of my life. To not see it one must be blinded by something, and there are many things with which to blind you. I feel we have reached a level of warfare to include the mind and the social structure. The system I grew up in is very different than what I experience today. As I see it, the system may well be beyound repair to what it once was. A Warrior dose not start shit, they finish shit. They will be ready when needed. My Oath was to protect and defend the Constitution from both foriegn and domestic threats. I stand by that. It means something to me. War is needed at times to restore good order and discipline, I believe. I pray that it does not come down to violence but that will depend on the two parties.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

Chapter 9: Desert Horizons

Romance and Hardship in the Southwest – The Last Taming of America

The Dust Bowl had scattered many Kuykendalls to California’s golden valleys, but the westward pull did not end at the San Joaquin. For some branches—especially those with deep Texas ranching roots—the high desert of New Mexico and Arizona called with its own austere promise. By the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, kin from the Old Three Hundred lines and later Oklahoma settlers drifted across the Rio Grande and into the territories that would become states in 1912. They came for open range, mining booms, railroad jobs, and the chance to run cattle in country too dry for plows but perfect for hardy men on horseback.

The Southwest was different from the prairies and plateaus they had known. Here the land was vast and unforgiving—red rock canyons, sagebrush seas, jagged mountains rising like cathedral spires, and skies so clear the stars felt close enough to touch. Water was precious; rivers like the Pecos and Gila ran thin or vanished in sand. But the country held beauty that could steal your breath: sunrises bleeding crimson over the Sangre de Cristo peaks, cottonwoods turning gold along the Rio Grande, thunderstorms that rolled in from nowhere and left the air smelling of wet creosote and promise.

In Eddy County, New Mexico—near Carlsbad—the Pecos River valley offered irrigated land for alfalfa, cotton, and cattle. Alva Benjamin Kuykendall, born there in 1897 to a line tracing back through Texas and Arkansas branches, grew up in this world. His family ranched and farmed the river bottoms, building adobe or frame houses with wide porches to catch the breeze. Farther west, in Cochise County, Arizona, near the Mexican border, Leslie R. Kuykendall (b. 1910 in Douglas) spent his life as a cowboy—inducted into the Willcox Cowboy Hall of Fame for decades of riding, roping, and branding on border ranches. These were vaquero country: mesquite thickets, live oaks, and the rhythm of Spanish-influenced cattle work.

The romance of the desert frontier lay in its blending. Anglo Kuykendalls, carrying the independent streak of Capt. Abraham’s militia days, met long-established Hispanic ranching families—descendants of Spanish land grantees, Mexican settlers, and Tejano vaqueros. Marriages bridged worlds: a Kuykendall cowboy courting a daughter of a longtime New Mexican or Arizona ranchero, learning to speak Spanish in the saddle, sharing barbecues under cottonwoods, raising children who grew up bilingual and at home on both sides of the cultural line. Rodeos, fiestas, Catholic feast days mixed with Protestant hymns; vaquero roping techniques blended with Anglo trail-driving know-how. It was not always easy—language barriers, land disputes, cultural misunderstandings—but it forged families resilient and rich in heritage.

Hardship was never far away. Droughts could last years, turning grass to dust; flash floods swept away corrals and homes; Apache and later border raids (even into the early 1900s) kept rifles close. Mining towns like Bisbee and Douglas boomed and busted; railroads brought jobs but also labor strife. Yet the Kuykendalls endured—building windmills to pull water from deep wells, stringing barbed wire across canyons, raising children who learned to read the land’s moods and respect its moods.

In the quiet evenings, with the sun dropping behind the Chiricahua Mountains and the coyotes starting their chorus, the desert offered a different kind of peace. Here, under skies vast enough to make a man feel small and significant at once, the Kuykendalls found a final frontier romance: love born of shared hardship, families rooted in two cultures, a life carved from rock and sun and stubborn will.

This was the last taming of America. The interior had been claimed, the prairies fenced, the mountains crossed—but the desert Southwest remained the final epic experiment. Here, the American dream was built not by conquest alone, but by open skies and open hearts, by reliance on one another across lines of language and heritage. Faith still anchored them—Baptist and Methodist services in small frame churches, Catholic Masses in adobe missions, shared prayers for rain and safety. The blending of cultures was the true miracle: Anglo grit meeting Hispanic endurance, creating a Southwest identity that was uniquely American—tough, generous, and unafraid to learn from those already on the land.

Historical Overview: The Last Frontier – Hardship, Romance, Faith, and Cultural Blending in the Desert Southwest

The American Southwest (New Mexico and Arizona Territories, statehood 1912) was the final major frontier of the contiguous United States. After the Civil War and the closing of the Great Plains, settlers pushed into this arid region for cattle ranching, mining (copper, silver, gold), railroads (Southern Pacific, Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe), and irrigated farming (Pecos and Gila Valleys). The Homestead Act still applied, but the land was harsh—droughts, flash floods, extreme temperatures, and sparse water made survival a daily test. Comanche, Apache, and later border banditry added danger well into the early 1900s.

Hardship was unrelenting: families lived in adobe or frame houses, hauled water miles, battled rattlesnakes and scorpions, and watched crops fail in dry years. Yet romance bloomed from shared struggle. Anglo settlers—many from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas—met established Hispanic communities with deep Spanish colonial roots (land grants from the 1700s, vaquero ranching traditions). Intermarriage was common in ranching areas; bilingual households raised children fluent in English and Spanish, blending Protestant and Catholic traditions. Rodeos fused Anglo and vaquero styles; fiestas and barbecues became community events where cultures met on equal ground.

Faith remained central. Baptist and Methodist circuit riders followed the railroads; small churches and revival meetings offered spiritual refuge. Catholic missions and parishes served Hispanic families. The shared reliance on providence—praying for rain, safety, and survival—bridged divides. The Southwest became the last epic American experiment: not conquest, but integration; not isolation, but open hearts under open skies. The Kuykendalls who settled here (Eddy County, NM; Cochise County, AZ) embodied this—taming the desert not with force, but with endurance, faith, and willingness to blend.

The march that began in New Netherland had reached its western horizon. From Dutch river valleys to Ozark hollows, Texas prairies to Oklahoma homesteads, California orchards to these desert reaches, the Kuykendalls had crossed a continent. In the high, dry air of New Mexico and Arizona, the flame still burned—quieter now, but no less bright—proof that the journey itself was the true inheritance.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@JamesHu27192912 Amen Brother, when I retired from the military in 1995 I could not bring myself to sign the social contract again and I'm glad I didn't. The U.S. has become a shithole and I want no part of it.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@JamesHu27192912 You are spot on, preach it Brother! There are more of us than we know.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

Chapter 8: Black Blizzards to Golden Orchards

An Exodus to California

The Oklahoma homesteads claimed in the great rush of 1893 had promised God’s country, but by the early 1930s, the land itself seemed to turn against the people who had fought so hard to tame it. The Dust Bowl arrived like a slow-moving catastrophe. Years of drought, over-plowed soil, and relentless wind stripped the topsoil from the southern plains—Oklahoma, Texas Panhandle, western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and parts of Arkansas and Missouri. Black blizzards rolled across the prairies: towering walls of dust so thick they blotted out the sun at noon, choking lungs, burying fences, drifting against barn doors like snow. Crops withered, cattle starved, banks foreclosed, and hope blew away with the dirt.

For Kuykendall families who had put down roots in Payne and Creek Counties after the land runs—or whose kin had drifted there from Texas ranches and Arkansas Ozarks—the suffering was personal. Wheat fields turned to powder; wells ran dry; children wore damp cloths over their faces to breathe; families ate cornbread and jackrabbit when they could get it. The Depression had already crushed prices; now nature finished the job. Many packed what little they could into battered Model Ts or trucks—mattresses tied on top, pots and pans rattling, kids in the back—and headed west on Route 66, the Mother Road, toward California’s promised valleys.

This was the time one reads about in books and watches in movies—John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Dorothea Lange’s haunting photographs, the Okie migration immortalized in song and screen. It was real, and it was tribulation like none before. The road was long and cruel: dust storms that forced them off the highway, breakdowns in the desert, hunger that gnawed day and night. They were called “Okies,” a slur that stuck to anyone from the Dust Bowl states, even if they came from Texas or Arkansas. The Kuykendalls who joined the exodus were part of the largest internal migration in American history—some 200,000 to 400,000 people fleeing the plains between 1935 and 1940.

The promise of California was the golden garden of Eden: endless orchards, steady picking jobs, wages that could feed a family. Handbills and rumors spoke of peaches, grapes, oranges, cotton—work for anyone willing. But the reality was harsher than the promise. California growers needed cheap labor for the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, but they resented the flood of migrants. Border patrols in the Tehachapi Mountains tried to turn them back, calling them “disease-ridden paupers.” Locals posted signs: “No Okies Allowed.” Many ended up in Hoovervilles—makeshift shantytowns of tents, cardboard, and tin—along irrigation ditches or near packing sheds. Families followed the crops: peas in spring, grapes in summer, cotton in fall, oranges in winter. Wages were pennies—sometimes a cent a pound for cotton—and hours brutal under the sun. Children worked beside parents; malnutrition and illness stalked the camps.

Yet the Kuykendalls carried the same resilience that had brought them from Minisink to Flat Rock, from Ozark hollows to Oklahoma homesteads. Some found steady work in the orchards—picking peaches in Tulare County, pruning almond trees in the Sacramento Valley, or harvesting grapes near Fresno. Others settled in small towns like Bakersfield or Visalia, building lives from migrant camps to modest homes. Faith was their anchor. The revival spirit from Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ozarks lived on in California’s migrant camps: preachers held services under canvas or in the open air, singing hymns that drowned out the wind, baptizing converts in irrigation canals, reminding families that God had not forgotten them. The Bible was read by lantern light in tents; prayers rose over the sound of crying babies and coughing children. It was true faith—raw, tested, unbreakable.

There were prejudices to face. They were outsiders—called dirty, ignorant, unwanted. California natives saw them as invaders threatening jobs and resources. Yet the Kuykendalls blended into unfamiliar cultures while remaining American at heart. They learned Spanish from Mexican and Filipino pickers, shared meals of tortillas and beans, worked beside Dust Bowl migrants from every corner. The camps became melting pots: Okies, Arkies, Black families, Dust Bowl Mexicans, all bound by the same need to survive. In time, many put down roots—buying small plots, opening shops, sending children to school. WWII brought relief: defense factories in Los Angeles and the Bay Area pulled men and women off the fields into steady paychecks; military service called sons to distant theaters. By the war’s end, many had become Californians—farmers, mechanics, merchants—turning exodus into endurance.

Historical Overview: The Dust Bowl Exodus – Tribulation, Migration, and the Promised Land

The Dust Bowl (1930–1936) was an environmental and human catastrophe caused by prolonged drought, poor farming practices, and high winds that eroded millions of acres of topsoil across the southern Great Plains. Black blizzards—dust storms so dense they turned day to night—forced mass migration. The largest exodus in U.S. history saw 200,000–400,000 people leave Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas for California, most heading to the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys for agricultural work. Route 66 became the main artery, dubbed the “Mother Road” by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

California’s welcome was cold. Growers needed labor for cotton, grapes, peaches, apricots, and citrus, but locals feared wage depression and relief burdens. Border checkpoints (often called “bum blockades”) tried to turn migrants away; signs read “No Okies Allowed.” Many lived in Hoovervilles—named for President Hoover—shantytowns of tents and scrap along ditches or near packing sheds. Wages were low (1–2 cents per pound for cotton), hours long, and discrimination fierce. Yet faith sustained many: migrant preachers held services in camps, singing hymns and praying for rain and relief. The revival tradition from earlier decades lived on in these gatherings—simple, emotional, interracial in many cases.

The “promised land” was no Eden. Hardships included malnutrition, disease (pneumonia, dysentery), child labor, and exploitation by growers. But endurance won out. Many families stabilized after WWII—defense jobs, union organizing (e.g., United Farm Workers later), small farms, or businesses. The Kuykendalls, like other Dust Bowl migrants, blended into California’s diverse cultures while holding fast to their American core: work hard, trust God, keep moving forward.

The journey from black blizzards to golden orchards was the final great test. It stripped away illusions but revealed the same unbreakable core: families who refused to break, who turned hardship into harvest. In the shade of peach trees and the scent of ripening fruit, the Kuykendalls who made it through found not just survival, but a new chapter. The flame that had crossed oceans, mountains, prairies, and dust now glowed quietly in California’s valleys—proof that even when the land itself turned against them, the march could continue.

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

🚨 THEY SANK THE GAS STATION.
SOUTHCOM just hit a floating refuel ship in the Eastern Pacific.

It was feeding narco boats at sea. Treasury already had it sanctioned. Intel tied it to Los Choneros.

Marines and Sailors launched off USS San Antonio. Boarded it. Cleared it. No shots. Crew to Ecuador. Then they sent the hull to the bottom.

That’s how you break a cartel. Not a press conference. Cut the fuel. Sink the node.
Dept of War. Ecuador. A3C. Narco-terrorists don’t get a pit stop on the way to American streets.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

Chapter 7: The Last Great Rush
A Race to Claim God’s Country

By the 1880s, the open frontier was closing fast. Barbed wire fenced the Texas prairies, railroads sliced through the cattle trails, and the free range that had fed generations of Kuykendalls was shrinking. But one vast stretch of land remained unclaimed—nearly seven million acres in what was then called the Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, in northern Indian Territory (now northwest Oklahoma). To the Kuykendalls scattered across Arkansas Ozarks, Texas ranches, and Missouri river bottoms, it sounded like the final gift of the frontier: God’s country, wide and waiting.

The U.S. government had long promised this land to the Cherokee Nation as a hunting preserve, but pressure from settlers—“boomers” who camped along the borders chanting for opening—finally forced the issue. On September 16, 1893, the largest land run in American history was set. At high noon, a cannon would boom, and tens of thousands of men and women—on horseback, in buggies, on bicycles, even on foot—would charge across the line to stake claims of 160 acres each under the Homestead Act.

This was not for the weak or faint of heart. The new frontier demanded everything: courage, speed, luck, and a stomach for chaos. For the Kuykendalls who joined, it was the last great race. Descendants from the Ozark branches (Franklin and Faulkner Counties) and Texas kin (Fort Bend, Matagorda lines) gathered along the Kansas border or the southern Cherokee Strip line. They had heard the stories: free land, rich black soil along the Cimarron and Salt Fork rivers, timber for cabins, grass for cattle. Some arrived weeks early, camping in tent cities that sprang up like mushrooms—Ark City, Caldwell, Hennessey—where merchants sold claims, guns, plows, and hope.

At noon on September 16, the signal cracked. A pistol shot, a cannon roar, a bugle call—and the surge began. Dust clouds rose like thunderheads. Horses thundered, wagons lurched, men shouted, women clutched reins or ran on foot. The line stretched for miles; the race was chaos and exhilaration. Claim jumpers sneaked in early as “sooners,” hiding in ravines or brush to stake first; others rode hard for the best river-bottom tracts. Stakes were driven with hammers or rifles fired into the ground to mark corners. By nightfall, tent cities had risen—Woodward, Enid, Perry, Alva—where claims were registered amid fistfights, whiskey, and jubilation.

Kuykendall names appear in the records and family accounts of this rush and the earlier 1889 Unassigned Lands opening. Branches settled in Payne County (near Stillwater), Creek County (Drumright area), and other counties—building sod houses or dugouts, planting wheat, raising stock, and joining the rush to statehood in 1907. Some were legitimate racers; others bought relinquished claims or arrived shortly after as “legal settlers.” They brought the same grit that had carried them from Minisink to Flat Rock: axes to clear timber, plows to break sod, Bibles for Sunday meetings, and rifles for protection against claim jumpers or the occasional prairie storm.

The hardships were like none before. The first winter was brutal—blizzards that buried sod houses, wells that froze, crops that failed in drought years. Summers brought heat that cracked the earth, grass fires that raced unchecked, and dust storms that turned day to night. Water was scarce in many claims; malaria lurked in low spots; rattlesnakes and coyotes were constant neighbors. Yet the land rewarded endurance: wheat fields turned golden, cattle grazed the rolling hills, towns grew from tents to board sidewalks. Churches sprang up—Baptist, Methodist, Christian—echoing the revival spirit their ancestors had carried over the mountains. The Kuykendalls who stayed helped turn chaos into community: schools, courthouses, railroads, and families that would endure Dust Bowl and beyond.

Historical Overview: The Last Frontier Rush – Taming the Interior

The Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893 was the final, largest act of the American land rush era. The Cherokee Outlet—6.5 million acres in northern Indian Territory—had been reserved for Cherokee hunting and grazing since the 1830s Trail of Tears, but pressure from white settlers (“boomers”) and railroad interests forced its opening. The run followed the 1889 Unassigned Lands opening (central Oklahoma) and several smaller runs, but 1893 dwarfed them: ~100,000 participants, the biggest single-day land grab in history. Rules were strict: no prior entry (hence “sooners” who cheated), claims marked by stakes or monuments, registration at land offices within days. Disputes over claims filled courts for years.

This was nation-building at its rawest. Oklahoma Territory (formed 1890) was the last major unclaimed interior land in the contiguous U.S. The run tamed it overnight: tent cities became permanent towns (Enid, Perry, Woodward, Alva), farms spread across the Cimarron and Salt Fork valleys, railroads followed. Faith was central—many settlers carried the revival heritage of the Second Great Awakening; early churches (Methodist, Baptist, Christian) were among the first structures built. Brush-arbor meetings and circuit preachers continued in the new land, offering spiritual endurance amid hardship.

Opportunities were immense but fleeting. The Homestead Act (1862) still promised 160 acres to those who improved it, but the run was a one-shot race. Hardships were extreme: first-year crop failures, blizzards, grasshopper plagues, water shortages, and claim-jumper violence. Yet the Kuykendall spirit—self-reliance, faith, community—prevailed. They tamed the interior not with armies, but with plows, prayers, and stubborn will.

This was the last great rush—the final chapter of the open frontier. No more unclaimed land, no more cannon-booms to start a new life. But for those who raced and won, it was divine timing: God’s country handed down to those bold enough to claim it. The flame that began in New Netherland, carried through revivals and revolutions and cattle trails, now burned steady on Oklahoma homesteads—proof that even the last frontier could be tamed by men and women who refused to stop moving west.

[Farm Girl Carrie™️👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

What is a Color Revolution?

We have been experiencing one here in
the United States since Donald Trump became president in 2016.

Listen to @realdefender45 as she does a marvelous job of explaining.

You’ll want to hang on to this and
share it with someone you care about.

[American Warrior for Christ @johnrackham82]

It's time for a bot cleanse.

I am NOT a bot.

Who else is NOT a bot?

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

The world has been carried on Americans' back for far to long, the period of a New World Order is over. Unless, you are speaking of America's New World Order, a world of peace and order with fair trade and most of all Freedom of the people. Our ancestors built this country with grit, determination and preserverance. They had faith in God and demanded independence and freedom, with force of arms when necessary. God Blessed America. Many of us will not forget to pay tribute to our ancestors.

[Jeff pontz @827js]

This is an Army of Veterans
who are prepared to do whatever is necessary
to uphold the Constitution.
Their numbers are growing by the thousands.

Re-post if you support this!

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

The Trail continues:

Chapter 6: The Cowboys and the Chisholm Trail - Where the Longhorns Ran and the Kuykendalls Rode

By the close of the Civil War in 1865, Texas was a land of broken fences, scattered herds, and men hungry for a way to rebuild. The prairies that Capt. Abner Kuykendall and the Old Three Hundred had claimed in the 1820s now held millions of feral longhorns—descendants of Spanish cattle gone wild during the chaos of revolution and war. They were tough, lean, and worthless on the hoof in Texas, where markets had collapsed. But up north, in the railheads of Kansas, a single steer could fetch ten times the price. All that stood between poverty and fortune was a trail north—and men tough enough to drive the herds.

Enter the Chisholm Trail, the greatest cattle highway in American history. Named for Jesse Chisholm, a Cherokee trader whose wagon ruts marked the route, it stretched from South Texas through Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to Abilene, Kansas—over a thousand miles of dust, rivers, stampedes, rustlers, lightning storms, and Comanche country. From 1867 through the early 1880s, more than five million longhorns walked that trail, turning Texas into the cattle kingdom of the world and feeding a hungry postwar nation.

Among the trail bosses who made it possible was Wylie Martin Kuykendall (1839–1920), one of the toughest sons of Capt. Abraham’s Texas line. Orphaned at seven when his father, Robert H. Kuykendall Jr., was ambushed and killed by Indians in 1846, Wylie grew up fast. By age ten he was punching cattle in Matagorda County; by twelve he was trailing herds to Missouri on the dangerous precursor routes—nine-month drives through hostile territory, often with U.S. Army escorts because the tribes were so fierce. He called one of those early drives “the hardest I ever made.”

When the Civil War ended, Wylie went to work for the legendary Abel Head “Shanghai” Pierce, the towering, booming-voiced cattle baron of Rancho Grande in Matagorda County. Pierce needed a trail boss who could handle men, horses, and longhorns alike. Wylie became that man—range boss by day, trail boss on the long drives north. Family accounts credit him with at least eight Chisholm Trail trips in the classic era, pushing thousands of head from the Gulf Coast to railheads like Caldwell, Newton, and Abilene.

The trail was hell and poetry in equal measure. Dawn came with the cook’s clanging triangle and coffee over mesquite coals. Cowboys rolled out of their soogans (blankets), saddled up, and strung out the herd—two to three thousand head—in a long, sinuous line. Point riders kept the leaders straight; swing and flank men held the sides; drag riders ate dust at the rear, coaxing the lame and stubborn. River crossings were the worst: the Red, the Cimarron, the Canadian—swift, muddy, full of quicksand and floating hazards. Stampedes could start from a lightning flash or a coyote’s howl, turning a quiet night into thunder and chaos as men rode hell-for-leather to turn the herd.

Wylie rode through it all—dust storms that blackened the sky, hail that bruised men and horses, rustlers who tried to cut out strays, and the ever-present threat of Indian raids. He married Shanghai’s sister Susan in 1869 (Shanghai grumbled he wanted a trail boss, not a brother-in-law), and together they built a life on the prairies. Wylie later invested in better breeds—Herefords and Brahmans—owning ranches like the Buckeye, but the Chisholm Trail years defined him: orphan boy to trail boss, sleeping under the stars with a rifle close, earning respect with quiet competence and iron will.

Other Kuykendalls rode the trail too—cousins and kin from the Fort Bend and Matagorda lines—working for outfits like Pierce’s or smaller ranches. They were the last of the true open-range cowboys before barbed wire closed the free range in the 1880s. The trail ended when railroads reached deeper into Texas, but the legend lived on.

Historical Overview: Reconstruction, Faith, and Endurance on the Post-War Trail

The end of the Civil War (1865) plunged Texas into Reconstruction—a decade of federal occupation, military rule, and bitter social upheaval. The state was readmitted to the Union in 1870, but the war had devastated its economy: plantations lay idle, cattle roamed unbranded, and currency was worthless. The Chisholm Trail (1867–1884) became a lifeline for recovery. It allowed Texas ranchers to sell millions of longhorns to northern markets, injecting cash into a broken economy and giving small farmers and former Confederates a way to rebuild without relying on the defeated plantation system.

Reconstruction was harsh for many white Texans. Freedmen’s Bureau agents, carpetbaggers, and scalawags enforced new rights for formerly enslaved people, while martial law suppressed resistance. Yet the trail-driving era offered a kind of escape: out on the open range, away from federal oversight and planter politics, men like Wylie Kuykendall could earn hard money through skill and endurance. The cattle drive was meritocratic—trail bosses were chosen for ability, not birth or politics.

Faith remained a steady anchor. The revival spirit from the Second Great Awakening carried forward in post-war Texas. Baptist and Methodist circuit riders followed the herds, holding brush-arbor meetings at cow camps and railheads. Preachers baptized cowboys in rivers, prayed over stampedes, and reminded men facing danger that God was watching. Many trail outfits included Black cowboys—freedmen or sons of enslaved people—who rode alongside whites, shared the same hardships, and often joined the same worship services. The trail was one of the few places where racial lines blurred under shared necessity.

Endurance was the true creed. Cowboys faced cholera, lightning, thirst, and exhaustion, yet they kept the herd moving. The Kuykendalls, with their revival heritage and frontier blood, embodied this: faith gave them hope, endurance gave them strength. The Chisholm Trail was not just a cattle route—it was a proving ground for a nation still healing, where men rebuilt their lives one drive at a time.

In those long days under the big sky, with dust in their throats and the lowing of longhorns in their ears, the Kuykendalls helped feed a nation and forge the cowboy myth. They were tough as nails, loyal to the brand, and romantic in a way only the frontier could make men. The Chisholm Trail was their proving ground—the place where the flame from New Netherland burned brightest in the saddle, driving America’s hunger northward, one hoofbeat at a time.

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@ClaraSonia15003 @tburg101751907 @EmpireWrecking @QRYBLUR76 @OtisPearson7 @Weinsoff_BA @MyInfo53385524 @VeitPopp @Clyde4210Allen @KerryHales1971 @FolkmarWill Time to take out the trash!

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@JamesHu27192912 Me too, Brother!!!

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@amernadeemadv @LauraLoomer

[Howie Kuykendoll @AWarrior1957]

@LauraLoomer