With the opening of the approximately two million acres of Oklahoma Country for homestead settlement at 12 noon Monday, April 22, 1889, thousands of settlers rushed to claim free land. By law, claimants had to register at one of two U. S. Government offices, at Kingfisher or Guthrie. The modest 18 x 30 feet false fronted frame U. S. Land Office at Guthrie stood alone that day on the hill east of the railroad station, but it was almost immediately surrounded by hundreds of eager settlers trying to register claims, and by nightfall it stood in a sea of tents that made up Guthrie. On April 23, the Kansas City Gazette reported that the crowd around the land office was too great to be numbered and that those who had not filed their claims slept where they stood in line to be ready the next morning. For weeks, thousands of homesteaders filed claims and counterclaims for free land, and lines of claimants crowded Hell's Half Acre outside the office. Land Office Register John Dillie of Huntington, Ind., and Receiver Casius Barnes of Fayetteville, Ark., who became the fifth territorial governor in 1897, often worked all day and late into the night. In many cases, more than one person claimed a single piece of land, causing bitter arguments and court disputes that lasted for years. After a brick U. S. Post office was built in 1903 on Hell's Half Acre, the old frame land office was removed.