The short answer is that there were not enough people to comprise a state. It also hurt that two different groups petitioned Congress for representation by a nonvoting member and Congress did not know which if either group to recognize.

Originally, the area now known as the Oklahoma panhandle was included in the lands claimed by France. France conveyed the area to Spain. After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1825 it became part of Mexico. Then when Texas gained independence from Mexico it became part of the independent republic of Texas.

When Texas entered the Union it was required by the Kansas-Nebraska Act to convey away what is now the panhandle if it wished to maintain the institution of slavery. So the state of Texas ceded the panhandle to the United States which categorized it as public land, not part of any territory or state. In 1885 Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Outlet does not extend into the panhandle removing the last obstacle to settlement.

Because the panhandle was not part of any incorporated state or territory, there was no law. It was literally anarchy. If you wanted to own something you just took it. If you wanted to kill someone you just killed him. No one wanted to invest in building because there was no way to legally own the land the building sat on. Settlers formed committees for self-defense and two such committees sent emissaries to Congress to petition for a non-voting Congressional representative, and ultimately statehood.

Congress was leery of the two competing petitions. Besides, are there even enough people there to form a state? The State of Cimmaron proponents claimed there were 10,000 people living in the panhandle (which had not had a census yet). Yet 10 years later, an actual head count found only a quarter of the claimed 10,000 residents.

In 1890 Congress solved the panhandle problem by creating a new Oklahoma Territory comprised of Indian Territory, the old Oklahoma Territory, and the panhandle.

At different times the Oklahoma panhandle has been called no man's land, the public land strip, the unassigned lands and Old Beaver County. It has an unfortunate history.

Boise City, capital of the current Cimarron County, was founded as a land fraud. People sold lots promising lush, verdant and heavily treed lots. (In reality Boise City is like the semi-desert of New Mexico.) It was also the only mainland American city to be bombed by the US Air Force during WWII.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was centered almost exactly on the Oklahoma panhandle.

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The History of No-Man's Land, or Old Beaver County, in The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 1, Page 60, (1921-23).

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