Under treaties made in 1828 and 1833 with the Federal Government, the Cherokee Tribe exchanged their southeastern homelands for land in present northeastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas and a perpetual outlet west across southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma between the 96th and 100th meridians. In 1837, Reverend Isaac McCoy surveyed the Cherokee boundaries and found the northern boundary to be the southern edge of the Osage reserved lands, a line 2.46 miles north of the 37th parallel. When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, Kansas Territory's southern boundary was fixed at the 37th parallel, placing a narrow strip of Cherokee land within the new territory. The Cherokees asked for the boundary to be corrected, but no change was made, and after the Civil War they ceded in trust to the United States the 2.46-mile-wide strip north of the 37th parallel so it could become part of Kansas. Congress opened this strip to white settlers on May 11, 1872. This tract, often confused with the Cherokee Outlet, differed sharply from it: both extended west to the 100th meridian, but the Outlet ran 226 miles long and 58 miles wide from the 96th meridian and contained about 13,000,000 acres, while the Strip ran 276 miles long and 2.46 miles wide from the Neosho River and contained about 435,000 acres; after 1866 the Outlet lay in Oklahoma and the Strip in Kansas. After the Strip was offered for sale in 1872, most of it became cropland and the great cattle drives in this vicinity ceased. Hunnewell was established in 1880 on a 400-acre townsite bought from Robeson Stewart and Hale on the southern edge of the Strip in Kansas beside the Cherokee Outlet boundary. Its first building, the Ford and Leonard outfitting store, was erected on June 16, the same day the Sumner County Railway, a branch of the Kansas City, Lawrence, and Southern Kansas Railroad, reached the town. That summer Hunnewell gained a doctor, a lawyer, stores, and a 33-room, three-story hotel costing $5,000, later known as the Sante Fe Hotel and the Hale Hotel; when it was razed in 1939, more than 70 pounds of lead were recovered from its white pine boards. The depot was completed in June, track was extended to the Indian Territory boundary, and in 1886 the Frisco completed its line into Hunnewell. Before a post office was established on August 20, 1880, mail was brought from South Haven and left on the depot desk for people to sort themselves. In 1885, George W. Miller of the 101 Ranch bought six outlots totaling about 93 acres for shelters, feed storage, and cattle pens, and he shipped in green horses to be broken year-round. In the 1880s Hunnewell became a roaring cowtown, and in 1889 the local newspaper reported that the Santa Fe had shipped 762 loads of cattle and the Frisco 749. When the Cherokee Outlet opened in September 1893, Registration Booth No. 8 stood here, incoming trains swelled the crowd to about 15,000 people waiting for the run, gambling houses and saloons flourished, ice water sold for $25 to $30 a barrel, and on September 16 horses and vehicles stood three and four deep along the starting line.