Oklahoma

Various Native Indian tribes lived in what's now OK by the 1500s.  In 1825, Congress changed the name of the area from the Louisiana Territory to Indian Territory.  In 1828, Congress reserved OK for Indians and ordered other settlers out, not universally popular.  But in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, relocating Indians from the eastern US.  In the winter of 1838-1839, the US moved a number of tribes from southeastern US to OK along what became known as the Trail of Tears.

Cherokee on the Trail of Tears

Between 1866 and 1889, more than 6,000,000 longhorns crossed through OK Indian lands, using the Chisholm Trail, the West Shawnee Trail and the Jones-Plummer Trail.  Then, to settle the land, the US Government held 5 land runs between 1889 and 1895.  50,000 people poured in for the first one and turned Guthrie, OK City, Stillwater and Norman into cities.  The land run in 1893 included more than 100,000 people – the biggest in US history.

Immediately after OK was admitted to the Union, the state legislature passed Jim Crow laws, thanks to a strong Ku Klux Klan presence.  In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of one of the US's worst race riots: whites claimed a black man in the black neighborhood of Greenwood had attacked a white girl, they threatened to kill him,  blacks gathered to protect him, whites flooded into the neighborhood and burned churches, broke into stores, destroyed property – somewhere between 300 and 3,000 people were killed before it was over.  It took the neighborhood 10 years to rebuild.

Map of Oklahoma

The OK Panhandle is 1/3 of OK's length (east to west) but is only 34 miles wide (north to south).

Arbuckle Mountains

The Arbuckle Mountains in southcentral OK were once as high as the Himalayas but, over the centuries, have eroded to their present elevation of 600-700'.

Because OK is in a climate transition zone, temperatures can vary widely and change drastically, e.g. on Nov. 11, 1911, OK City set a record high temp for that date of 83° and a record low temp for that date of 17°.

OK is second in the US in both number and percentage of Indian residents.

Fifteen miles from Tulsa are the Cross Timbers of OK, a stand of trees 300-500 years old.

OK includes 39 tribal governments, 38 of which have been federally recognized as sovereign nations, but no reservations.

OK is one of the US's top producers of oil, gas and winter wheat.

In Bartlesville stands Price Tower, the only skyscraper that Frank Lloyd Wright designed that was actually built.

Price Tower

OK has an official state country/western song (“Faded Love” by Bob Wills and John Willis), an official state poem (“Howdy Folks”), an official state furbearer (raccoon), and an official state meal (fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecued pork, biscuits, sausage & gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas [presumably not all to be eaten at one meal, because no official state heart attack has been designated]).