Cushing was in the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation opened to homesteaders on September 21, 1891. By the act of Legislature in 1939, October 10 was designated as Oklahoma Historical Day. In the run on September 22, 1891, William R. Little located a homestead of 160 acres on the present site of Cushing. Little, then 38 years old, was born in Illinois, came to Indian Territory for the first time in 1886, and in the following year took a homestead in the southwest corner of Kansas commuting it to cash shortly before coming to Oklahoma again on April 22, 1889.