The 1903 Armed Standoff That Put Meers, Oklahoma, On Edge

If you've ever been to Meers, it's a pretty quiet place. The only action the town gets now is the occasional rumbling on seismometers, wildfires every few years, and really long lines for those famous burgers. But back in 1903, there was a little more going on in those Wichita Mountains than people stopping for lunch.

In those days, the famed Wichita Mountains Gold Rush had brought a ton of prospectors into our area, and more than a few of them were digging in places they were fully aware they weren't allowed to mine. When the authorities decided it was time to shut things down, the issue became a huge confrontation.

That's how Meers ended up with this wild story about an armed standoff that sounds like every old gold-mining Western ever made, except it is true Oklahoma history.

The Wichita Mountains Gold Rush

Even though it was never as big as the California or Yukon gold rushes, the Wichita Mountains Gold Rush had been drawing people in for years. Everybody wanted to be the person who found enough gold to make the trip worthwhile, and Meers grew into a mining camp full of people hoping they'd hit the motherlode.

But there was a huge catch. The land in question was part of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation, and some of the miners were working claims they didn't own, and didn't care either way.

The government ordered the unauthorized mining to stop, and the people who had invested their money and labor weren't giving up without a fight.

The 1903 Meers Standoff

On September 3, 1903, authorities sent a small squad of Indian police to remove miners from these native claims, but instead of finding a handful of people ready to pack up and leave, they found a large group - maybe 100 - armed miners ready to have it out with their government.

The accounts are pure Hollywood Wild West too. Miners had taken positions among the rocks, trees, caves, and canyons around the camp. The police were obviously outnumbered, and what should have been a routine enforcement action became a dangerous confrontation.

At this point, I was excited to read about some Wild West gunfight in the mountains, but cooler heads prevailed. The outnumbered officers backed off to find a Plan B, C, and D, but the miners eventually walked away. That's a good result, if not really exciting.

The gold mining in the Wichita Mountains kept going on some scale, but as they all do, it eventually went bust before the decade was out.

The fortunes people hoped to find in the Wichita Mountains were either never there, or they're still undiscovered, and Meers gradually faded as a mining town, known now for the burgers. Which, by the way, are amazing if you can get the cheese soup poured over the top.

Not a bad bit of Oklahoma history for a town most of us have driven past wondering why it was ever there.