When the sun set on this land on April 21, 1889 there was no town here. The next day when the sun went down there was an Oklahoma City with 10,000 settlers. At noon on the 22nd the federal government opened “unassigned lands,” land not allocated for Indian reservations, to homesteaders who raced to stake a claim around a single thread of track on the Santa Fe Railroad. The “Boomers” who participated in the Land Run organized themselves, operating without legal municipal authority for more than a year. Right from the start supplies and newspapers and religious services could all be obtained by the settlers from tents scatted around the new town. Despite the presence of only a makeshift government it was only a rare occasion when the federalies needed to be summoned to maintain order.
Unlike boomtowns born of gold or silver, Oklahoma City was not withering away. The town became a vigorous trade center for the new territory, serving farmers and ranchers. When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907 the capital was wrested away from Guthrie and the population had increased sixfold from the original 10,000 by 1910. It was by far the biggest town in Oklahoma.
On December 3, 1928 oil was discovered within the city limits and hundreds of derricks sprouted in backyards and even on the lawn of the Capitol Building. By 1930 the population of Oklahoma City was approaching 200,000 and the town has not looked back since.
Not that there have not been missteps along the way. In 1965 the Central Business District General Neighborhood Renewal Plan drawn up by urban planner I.M. Pei, was formally adopted. The “Pei Plan,” as it was known, called for widespread demolition of a 528-acre swath of Oklahoma City to make way for “superblocks” of integrated housing and retail and office space. The plan was implemented for about 15 years after which the town had gained a convention center, a garden and scores of more parking lots but not much else. What it lost were hundreds of historic buildings, including a handful of cherished city landmarks.
In the 1990s a billion more dollars, much of it from a five-year penny sales tax, was pledged to redevelop Oklahoma City’s central core. This time wrecking balls were deployed more judiciously and the civic projects undertaken have met with considerably more favor. In the past decade Oklahoma City has attracted corporate headquarters, its first major league sports franchise and residents back to downtown. But before we see what managed to survive and what has been added to the Oklahoma City streetscape our walking tour will begin at the best thing to come out of the town’s checkered efforts at urban renewal...
There was settlement on the flatlands east of the Arkansas River by the Lochapoka and Creek tribes as early as the 1820s. When Indian Territory was established by the United States government in 1890 there was nothing remarkable about Tulsey Town, as the Creek Indians called it. Tulsa was officially incorporated on January 18, 1898 and as Oklahoma chugged towards statehood there was nothing to suggest the town would expand much beyond the 1,390 people recorded to live there in the 1900 census.
Everything changed on June 25, 1901 when the state’s first commercially viable oil well came in across the river at Red Fork (soon incorporated in the city limits.) In 1905 an even bigger strike was made 15 miles to the south in what became known as Glenn Pool. Texaco built the first oil refinery here in 1910 and Tulsa was on its way to being the “Oil Capital of the World.”
The population was 18,000 by 1910, 72,000 by 1920 and 141,000 by 1930. When the Great Depression slowed the boom, Tulsa had more buildings of ten or more stories than any city of its size in the world. Most of the skyscrapers were raised in the flamboyant Art Deco style and in the 1950s Time magazine anointed Tulsa the title of “America’s Most Beautiful City.”
Tulsa has never been shy with the wrecking ball, embarking on the state’s first urban renewal plan in 1959. But even though the oil bust of the 1980s caused the town to relinquish its title of “Oil Capital of the World” to Houston and sent several of its iconic Art Deco buildings into vacancy, many were left standing for us to see as we start our walking tour in a small patch of elevated open space in the center of the Tulsa skyline...