Special Map of Pushmataha County, Oklahoma [with two additional plat maps]

McAlester, Ok: McAlester Real Estate Exchange, 1910. Very good plus.. Three folded maps, one measuring approximately 11 x 14 inches and two measuring 13.75 x 8.5 inches, plus one 3.5 x 5.5 photograph. Light toning; a bit of minor edge wear. A trio of ephemeral promotional maps from the McAlester Real Estate Exchange, offering two plots of 156 acres each for sale in central Pushmataha County, Oklahoma. The first map delineates the plat of the entire southeastern Oklahoma county, with towns, rivers, and railroads added, and is annotated to point out the location of the two properties. The additional two maps each delineate a close-up of the specific township section, with the land in question shaded in yellow and pink, and bear captions recommending the best use for the land. The first map depicts a plot located eight miles southeast of the town of Standley, with, "Good grazing and timber land covered with blue stem grass and good commercial pine and oak timber; good orchard, vineyard, and berry land, adapted to Bermuda and sweet clover." The second parcel, located five miles southwest of Pickens boasts, "Good grazing land covered with blue stem grass and commercial timber,' as well as, "Good tillable land adapted to all farm products." Stapled to the top edge of this map is a photograph purporting to be a sample view of the land in question. At the foot of each map is a promotional text completed in type with further blandishments concerning the land in question and supposedly recent appraisal values and sale prices.

These claims, however, were likely fraudulent. The McAlester Real Estate Exchange was established soon after Oklahoma gained statehood by Roy Van Tress, who promised to obtain for his customers the rights to Indian Lands being sold by the federal government sight-unseen and without requirements of occupation or homesteading. From headquarters in Cincinnati and McAlester, as well as from mobile railcar offices, salesmen of the firm offered land that they often had no right to sell or was devoid of the bounty of natural resources and rich soil promised in the present advertisements. Van Tress himself was dogged by investigation into his business, and was eventually convicted of fraud in 1919 but managed to escape jail time. We locate no institutional copies of promotional maps for this long-running and noted Oklahoma land fraud.