Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City was born in a single day. On 22 April 1889 the Unassigned Lands, in what had been Indian Territory, were opened to settlement in the Land Run, and by nightfall some 10,000 homesteaders had claimed land where the city now stands. The population doubled in the following decade, and by the time Oklahoma became a state in 1907 the city had overtaken the territorial capital, Guthrie; the seat of government moved here in 1910. Stockyards and meat-packing plants drew trade from Chicago and Omaha, Route 66 passed through, and in 1928 oil was struck within the city limits, including under the State Capitol.

After the Second World War the interstates made the city a major crossroads, and federal lobbying brought Tinker Air Force Base. Between 1959 and 1961 a "Great Annexation Drive" expanded the city to more than 475 square miles. As in many American cities, families moved to the suburbs, urban renewal cleared much of downtown without replacing it, and the collapse of Penn Square Bank in 1982 and the oil bust after 1985 brought hard years.

In 1993 voters approved the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS), a redevelopment programme that paid for a ballpark, a library, the Bricktown Canal and more, and began the revival of the centre. On 19 April 1995 a bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people; the site became the National Memorial. The Thunder arrived in 2008, the Devon Energy Center became the state's tallest building in 2012, and a third MAPS round added the streetcar.

The city's identity mixes the cowboy West, oil money and the South. The Stockyards still hold one of the world's largest livestock markets, and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is one of its main attractions. Oklahoma is home to many tribal nations, and the First Americans Museum, opened in 2021, tells their histories and cultures.

Basketball is the great shared passion. The Thunder, who moved from Seattle in 2008, play downtown at the Paycom Center and won the NBA championship in 2025; the Comets play baseball in Bricktown, and the annual Women's College World Series makes the city a centre of college softball. The 2028 Summer Olympics are due to hold their canoe slalom and softball events here.

The arts are concentrated in a few districts: the Paseo's galleries and studios, the ballet, opera and philharmonic at the Art Deco Civic Center Music Hall, and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art with its Chihuly glass. Concerts fill venues in Bricktown, the historic Film Row district and the 1937 Tower Theatre on 23rd Street, on old Route 66. Each April the Festival of the Arts fills Bicentennial Park downtown.

Oklahoma City had about 681,000 people at the 2020 census, and its metropolitan area an estimated 1.49 million, the largest in the state. It is also enormous in area — second only to Houston among American cities that are not merged with their counties — so much of the land inside the limits is suburb, farmland or watershed. The Oklahoma River divides the city: the north side has fashionable urban districts near the centre and sprawling suburbs beyond, while the south side is more working-class and industrial, grew up around the stockyards and meat-packing plants, and is the centre of the fast-growing Latino community.

Oil, natural gas and related industries are the largest part of the economy. Devon Energy and Expand Energy have their headquarters here, as does Love's Travel Stops, and the city has one of the world's largest livestock markets. Government is the other pillar: Tinker Air Force Base employs about 27,000 people and the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center houses offices of the Federal Aviation Administration. Health care, universities and services have grown alongside them.

Life is lived by car, with long commutes on the interstates that meet in the city. Downtown, once almost empty after office hours, has about 7,600 residents and a steady stream of new housing. Spring brings a shared routine of watching the sky and the television forecasts: about 150 tornadoes have struck within the city limits since 1890.

Oklahoma City eats like the meeting point of the South and the cattle country. Steak is the local pride, and Cattlemen's Steakhouse in Stockyards City is the oldest restaurant still running in the state. Chicken-fried steak — a tenderised cube steak coated in seasoned flour and fried — is on most diner menus and is part of Oklahoma's official state meal, the only one in the country, which also lists barbecued pork, sausage with biscuits and gravy, fried okra, grits, black-eyed peas, cornbread and pecan pie.

The fried onion burger was created in El Reno, west of the city, in the 1920s as a way to stretch expensive beef during the railway strike of 1922, with thinly sliced onions cooked into the ground beef. Florence's, which the Oklahoman called the "Grand Dame of all local restaurants", became in 2022 the first Oklahoma recipient of a James Beard award, named one of America's Classics.

Immigration has added much more. The Asia District along Classen Boulevard is the centre of the city's large Vietnamese community, with restaurants, supermarkets and shops, and the south side is the centre of the fast-growing Latino community. Many of the best bars and restaurants have gathered in Automobile Alley, and food trucks and a farmers' market come to Scissortail Park in season.