The Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma in the United States. It was a 60-mile-wide (97 km) parcel of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border between 96 and 100°W. The Cherokee Outlet was created in 1836. The United States forced the Cherokee Nation of Indians to cede to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for a reservation and an "outlet" in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). At the time of its creation, the Cherokee Outlet was about 225 miles (360 km) long. The cities of Enid, Woodward, Ponca City, and Perry were later founded within the boundaries of what had been the Cherokee Outlet. The Cherokee Strip was a two and one-half mile wide piece of land running along the northern border of much of the Cherokee Outlet. It was the result of a surveying error. The whole of the Cherokee Outlet is often called the Cherokee Strip. Creation In 1836, the Treaty of New Echota between the Cherokees and the United States obligated the Cherokees to move west of the Mississippi River to lands assigned them in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). Their new lands included a 7.0-million-acre reservation and "a perpetual outlet west...as far west as the sovereignty of the United States" extended. The parcel of land extending west from the Cherokee reservation became known as the Cherokee Outlet. Under the terms of the treaty, the lands ceded to the Cherokees would "in no future time be included within the territorial limits or jurisdiction of any State or Territory" and the Cherokees were promised a land patent verifying their ownership of the land. In 1838, in what is called the Cherokee removal or Trail of Tears, most of the Cherokees, living primarily in northern Georgia, were forcibly relocated to Indian territory and their new lands. A census in 1835 had counted 16,500 Cherokees. The Civil War and its aftermath The Cherokee Outlet was little used for decades after its creation. The Cherokees were farmers rather than ranchers or hunters, but the nomadic and warlike Plains Indians recognized no ownership of the outlet except by themselves, and used the outlet for hunting. They resisted encroachments on their range, whether by Whites or other Indians. Consequently, only a few Cherokees took advantage of the outlet to the west of their homes for hunting or to graze cattle.