Oklahoma  
Sooner State
Motto: Labor Conquers All Things

Hotels         Airlines       Rental Cars

State bird, scissor-tailed flycatcher.   State flower, mistletoe State tree, redbud.
Famous for: Oil & Cattle
Famous Indian Tribe: Cherokee

Places of interest, such as beautiful Tulsa, lie in the hilly wooded northeast, only the sparse and treeless west is devoid of appeal, on the far side of the mid west "tornado alley" prairie grassland which holds the state's revitalized capital, Oklahoma City . The lakes and parks of the south, complete with mountains, foliage and bluegrass music, have made tourism Oklahoma's second industry after oil.

Will Rodgers the famous comedian, but more than that, he was more of a speaker on politics.
Will was Cherokee indian, and the Cherokee Nation is in Oklahoma, We think of Cowboys and rodeo riding bronc busters, and the Cherokee are some of the best.

The Cherokee nation, formed in 1839 when the Trail of Tears finally reached its end. The sophisticated Cherokee had a written constitution, published the first newspaper in Indian Territory, and set up the Cherokee female seminary, the first higher education school for women west of the Mississippi.

The Cookson Hills of Oklahoma were made famous in the movies, as the hide out of such bank robbers of the 1930's as: Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Baby Face Nelson and most of all Bonnie and Clyde. The photo is the car Bonnie & Clyde were suppose to have been killed in by the FBI.

Eastern Oklahoma includes the "Green Country" of the northeast, patterned with the foothills of the Ozarks, and woods, streams, lakes and rivers that make it a popular camping destination. Art Deco Tulsa is its cultural center; Tahlequah and Pawhuska are the capitals of the Cherokee and Osage nations respectively.

Oklahoma City and Tulsa are separated by one hundred surprisingly green miles along the Will Rogers Turnpike and the famed Route 66 . The Blue Whale in Catoosa and the Round Barn in Arcadia are classic landmarks along the "mother road." West of the state capital, I-40 carries you across empty agricultural communities, the tedium only broken by the worthwhile Route 66 Museum in Clinton. I-44 to Wichita Falls passes near the ruggedly beautiful Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge ; to the north, in the Oklahoman Panhandle, ranches and tiny hamlets are the only signs of life.

OKLAHOMA CITY was created in a matter of hours on April 22, 1889, after a single gunshot signaled the opening of the land to white settlement. What was barren prairie at dawn was by nightfall a city of ten thousand. In 1911 the capital was moved here from nearby Guthrie, and in 1928 oil was discovered. Sitting on one of the nation's largest oilfields, the city was brought up short by the slump in the 1980s, but it remains the largest stocker and feeder cattle market in the world. The economy came alive again in the 1990s, aided by tourism development and an inflated sales tax that funded redevelopment in run-down neighborhoods.

The Creek Indians, relocated to MUSKOGEE in the 1830s, established the town as the central meeting place of the Civilized Tribes, fifty miles southeast of Tulsa; decades later in 1905, Native American leaders gathered here to draw up a plan for their own separate state, which was never to be. The arrival of the railroad in the 1870s and the discovery of oil in 1903 both guaranteed that the town would be usurped by white settlers. The Five Civilized Tribes Museum , Honor Heights Drive, Agency Hill, tells the Native Americans' story through costumes, documents, photographs and jewelry, along with a reconstructed trading post and a printing room (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $2). The other unlikely attraction in town is the USS Batfish , a WWII-era submarine moored in the Oklahoma grass, 3500 Batfish Rd (Mon, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm;

TULSA is a good-looking city, thanks in part to the striking Art Deco architecture that dates from its Twenties heyday as an immensely wealthy oil town. Despite - or possibly because of - its pleasant atmosphere, two excellent museums, and thriving art scene, the city tends towards complacency. In addition, fundamentalist Christian attitudes are hard to ignore; Tulsa is known as the "Buckle of the Bible Belt."