The capital of the American heartland — where the Oklahoma City National Memorial's 168 empty chairs fill the field where the Alfred P. Murrah Building stood until April 19 1995, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum houses the finest collection of Western American art in the world, the Bricktown Canal district revived a derelict warehouse district into Oklahoma's most visited entertainment area, and Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' partly inspired by the Oklahoma Dust Bowl that drove his family out of this state
Oklahoma City (710,000; metro 1.45 million) is the capital and largest city of Oklahoma — one of the most politically and culturally distinctive states in the United States, the epicentre of the 1930s Dust Bowl (the worst ecological disaster in American history, which drove approximately 200,000 Oklahomans ('Okies') to California), and the site of the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in American history prior to September 11, 2001. The city sits at the heart of the Southern Great Plains, at the geographic and cultural intersection of the American South and the American West — part cowboy,…
Oklahoma was 'Indian Territory' — land assigned to the Five Civilised Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek/Muscogee, Seminole) after the Trail of Tears forced relocations from the Southeast (1830–1850) — until the federal government opened it for white settlement in 1889. The Oklahoma Land Rush (April 22, 1889, 'the Unassigned Lands') — in which an estimated 50,000 settlers lined up on the border at noon and raced on horseback, on foot, and in wagons to stake claims — created the first settlements at Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Kingfisher, and Norman in a single afternoon. April 19, 1995:…