Alva Review-Courier -

Think back to September 1993 when this entire area was reenacting the Great Land Run of 1893. The excitement in the air was electrifying – people were so creative with period costumes, ideas for authentic celebrations and much more. All the little towns on the Oklahoma/Kansas border were having reenactments of what was also known as the Cherokee Strip Land Run. The event that occurred Sept. 16, 1893, marked the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Outlet in Oklahoma Territory's fourth and largest land run. It was part of what would later become the state of Oklahoma in 1907.

Kiowa, Kansas, was one of the little border towns that had big doings. One Kiowa woman remembers riding in a wagon for the reenactment. She is Bev Miller, who said, "It was the wildest, the most hysterical time. It was so funny. The mules were pulling the wagon so fast. We were bumping around everywhere in that wagon. We jumped out to stake our claim and then we had to defend it – someone was trying to take it from us. We had a blast doing it. You think of all your friends and the fun we had together. Bev Molz was a dear woman. Time passes too fast."

That wagon was owned by her buddy Bev Molz and her husband Jim. The two women taught for decades at the Kiowa turned South Barber Elementary School.

Jim and Bev's son Ron recently donated that wagon to Kiowa's Historical Society Museum on behalf of the Molz family. Ron said, "I saw the wagon sitting there in the shed and thought it should be in the museum." The South Barber FFA with Chapter Advisor Tommy Hutson volunteered to clean up the wagon.

Ron called Historical Society Board member Stan Michel and now the tall wooden covered wagon sits at the entrance of the museum. Ron said his dad bought the wagon in the 1980s from a man at Attica named Silcott. The wagon had been hanging in a barn for years and not used much. Unfortunately, none of the Molz family knows any of the history on the wagon before that.

The Molz family recommended contacting Dennis Ediger of Hardtner who worked for Jim many years. Ediger said he started working for Jim in 1989 and he already had the wagon. Dennis remembers that he, Terry and Jim went to an Amish community near Hutchison and they made arch bows that hold up the canvas.

Ediger remembers the Land Run reenactment well. Jim rode in the front of the wagon with Terry Coulter who owned the two mules they used to pull it. Ediger rode a horse alongside the wagon "in case those mules acted up!"

He remembers Bev and Bev riding in the back. "Those two women didn't even let the wagon get stopped before they jumped out to stake their claim!"

"Things got wild and western at that deal!" Ediger said. He remembered the huge, kind of surprise wildly popular Martina McBride concert at the reenactment site directly northeast of the high school. Of national acclaim and beyond, McBride is from just up the road a few miles in Sharon, Kansas.