49 Fun Facts About Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City was founded during which 1889 event?

The Land Run opened the Unassigned Lands on April 22, 1889, and within hours some 10,000 homesteaders had staked claims around a railway stop called Oklahoma Station.

In 1935 Oklahoma City became the first city in the world to install which street fixture?

The parking meter was newspaperman Carl Magee's answer to downtown workers hogging every space all day; the first 175 went in on July 16, 1935, at a nickel an hour.

Which city was Oklahoma's territorial capital before the move to Oklahoma City?

Guthrie lost the capital in a statewide vote on June 11, 1910, and the state seal was moved to Oklahoma City so quickly that Guthrie's leaders long claimed it had been stolen in the night.

Which territory merged with Oklahoma Territory at statehood?

Indian Territory's leaders had asked Congress for a state of their own at the Sequoyah Convention of 1905, but Washington insisted on one merged state, admitted on November 16, 1907.

Oklahoma City is namechecked in which 1946 Bobby Troup song?

Route 66: Troup wrote it on a 1946 drive to Hollywood with his wife in their Buick, and Nat King Cole's recording helped send post-war holidaymakers out along the road it celebrates.

Which invention did Oklahoma City grocer Sylvan Goldman roll out in his Humpty Dumpty stores in the 1930s?

The shopping cart began as a folding chair on wheels carrying two wire baskets, and shoppers shunned it until Goldman hired models to push carts around his stores.

The grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol are famous for which unusual sight?

Oil derricks arrived with the Oklahoma City field, struck south of town in December 1928; by 1935 it had spread to the north side, and wells were sunk on the statehouse grounds themselves.

Oklahoma's Capitol opened in 1917 without which feature, added in 2002?

A dome was allowed for in the design but left off to save money, so the building stood flat-topped for 85 years before its dome was finally added in 2002.

Which drive-in chain, born at a root beer stand in Shawnee, has its headquarters in Oklahoma City?

Sonic began in 1953 as the Top Hat, where founder Troy Smith copied a car-side intercom he had seen in Louisiana and put his carhops on roller skates.

Which Thunder star won the 2014 MVP award and used his speech to call his mother 'the real MVP'?

Kevin Durant's tearful tribute to his mother, Wanda, turned into a catchphrase and then a Lifetime film about her, The Real MVP: The Wanda Durant Story.

Which downtown Oklahoma City attraction is home to the Crystal Bridge?

Myriad Botanical Gardens holds the Crystal Bridge, a tropical conservatory; it grew out of I. M. Pei's urban-renewal plan, which called for razing hundreds of old downtown buildings and for a garden modelled on Copenhagen's Tivoli.

Oklahoma City's 1993 package to rebuild its downtown is known by which acronym?

MAPS, the Metropolitan Area Projects plan, paid for a ballpark, an arena and a canal in cash out of a temporary sales tax, so the city took on no debt to build them.

Which Oklahoma City entertainment district has a canal plied by water taxis?

Bricktown was a district of red-brick warehouses that had largely emptied out before the city dug a mile-long canal through it, which opened in July 1999.

Which historic downtown Oklahoma City hotel was restored and reopened in 2007?

The Skirvin stood empty for 19 years before its restoration, and it has a ghost story to match: in 2010 the New York Knicks blamed a loss to the Thunder on its haunted rooms.

At Oklahoma City's memorial, what stands for each 1995 bombing victim?

An empty chair stands for each of the 168 victims, set out in nine rows for the nine floors of the building, and nineteen of the chairs are smaller, for the children who died.

The Oklahoma City federal building destroyed in 1995 was named for which judge?

Alfred P. Murrah was orphaned in his teens and first reached Oklahoma City as a stowaway on a freight train; he worked his way through school and was a federal judge at 32.

What species is the Oklahoma City memorial's Survivor Tree?

American elm: the tree took the full force of the blast, and it was nearly cut down afterwards so that investigators could recover evidence caught in its branches.

Oklahoma City native Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award for which 1952 novel?

Invisible Man was the work of a man who had set out to be a musician: Ellison left Oklahoma City to study music at Tuskegee, and took up a literary career only after he moved to New York.

Which president signed the act creating the Oklahoma City National Memorial?

Bill Clinton signed the act in October 1997 and came back to dedicate the finished memorial himself on April 19, 2000, five years to the day after the bombing.

Oklahoma's tallest building as of 2025, completed in 2012, is named for which energy company?

Devon Energy's 50-storey tower tops every other building in the state, yet it has two fewer floors than the older BOK Tower in Tulsa, which it overtook.

Which arts-and-crafts retail chain was founded in Oklahoma City in 1972 and is still based there?

Hobby Lobby grew out of a $600 loan: David and Barbara Green borrowed it in 1970 to make miniature picture frames at home, and opened their first small shop two years later.

Which skyscraper proposed for Oklahoma City in 2024 was planned as the tallest in the US?

Legends Tower was drawn at exactly 1,907 feet, a height chosen to match the year Oklahoma became a state, which would put it above New York's One World Trade Center.

A seven-mile stretch of which river through Oklahoma City was renamed the Oklahoma River in 2004?

The North Canadian River once flooded the city, and flood control later left it almost dry; dams and locks then turned the renamed stretch into a chain of lakes used for rowing races.

Oklahoma City's Stockyards City district grew up around one of the country's biggest markets for which animals?

Cattle made the city's first big industry: in 1910 its boosters lured one of the country's big meat packers with a $300,000 bonus and a five-year tax holiday, and the stockyards opened that October.

Which is the only state capital larger than Oklahoma City by area?

Juneau takes in about 2,700 square miles, most of it mountain and icefield so rugged that no road links the city to the rest of Alaska, against some 600 for Oklahoma City.

In 1958 Oklahoma City teacher Clara Luper led her students in one of the civil rights era's first what?

Sit-ins: on August 19, 1958, her NAACP Youth Council pupils took seats at the Katz drugstore lunch counter and ordered Cokes, and the chain soon dropped its whites-only rule.

Which Oklahoma City suburb was struck by top-rated tornadoes in both 1999 and 2013?

Moore lay in the path of the 1999 storm, in which radar measured the fastest tornado winds then on record, over 300 mph, and in 2013 another top-rated tornado killed more than 20 people, seven of them children at a school in the town.

The 2013 El Reno tornado, west of Oklahoma City, went into the books as what?

Widest ever recorded, at 2.6 miles across: it swelled and changed course so fast that it killed three veteran storm chasers, among them the researcher Tim Samaras.

Which month of 2015 set Oklahoma City's record for its wettest month?

May 2015 brought 19.48 inches of rain, more than in any month since records began in 1890, and ended in deadly floods across Oklahoma and Texas.

Which air base near Oklahoma City was Oklahoma's largest single-site employer in 2025?

Tinker is named for Clarence Tinker, an Osage who rose to major general in the Army, whose bomber was lost at sea near Midway on a raid he led in June 1942.

The FAA's Oklahoma City campus is named for which Oklahoma senator?

Mike Monroney wrote the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, the law that created the FAA itself, and was known in the Senate as 'Mr. Aviation'.

Which rock band, formed in Oklahoma City in 1983, has a downtown alley named after it?

The Flaming Lips were offered the alley by the city in 2006, and three years later their song 'Do You Realize??' won a public vote to be named Oklahoma's official rock song.

Which lender's 1982 collapse helped trigger Oklahoma City's economic woes of the 1980s?

Penn Square Bank, which began life in a shopping mall, had sold more than a billion dollars of shaky oil loans on to bigger banks, and its failure helped bring down Chicago's Continental Illinois.

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art holds one of the world's most comprehensive collections of which artist's glass?

Dale Chihuly's glass arrived in 2002 as a temporary show to open the museum's new building, and it proved so popular that the museum bought the whole exhibition, 55-foot tower included.

In the 1950s Oklahoma City beat scores of rival cities to host a national museum honouring whom?

Cowboys: the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum began as one Kansas City man's campaign, and Oklahoma City won it by donating a hilltop site called Persimmon Hill.

A museum in Oklahoma City's canal district is dedicated to which stringed instrument?

The banjo: the American Banjo Museum began as a hall of fame for the four-string banjo alone, and now traces the instrument back to the early banjos made by enslaved Africans.

Which institution focused on Oklahoma's tribal nations opened in September 2021?

First Americans Museum tells the stories of Oklahoma's 39 tribal nations; building work began in 2006 but stopped for seven years when state money ran out, so the doors opened fifteen years after work started.

Which Oklahoma City restaurant was named one of America's Classics by the James Beard Foundation in 2022?

Florence's was opened in 1952 by Florence Jones Kemp, who had saved up as a waitress and started with 'two chickens and a prayer'; seventy years on, she was still at work there when the award came.

The Thunder relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 from which city?

Seattle had the team for 41 seasons and lost it when no public money could be found for a new arena; the new owners paid the city $45 million to walk away from their lease.

Which NBA team temporarily played in Oklahoma City from 2005 to 2007?

New Orleans Hornets: displaced by Hurricane Katrina, a team that had been last in the league for crowds at home drew more than 18,000 a night in Oklahoma City, proof the city could fill an NBA arena.

What is the name of the Thunder's mascot?

Rumble the Bison's official legend has him struck by lightning while saving his herd from a storm; he first appeared in February 2009 and was named the NBA's Mascot of the Year six months later.

Whom did the Thunder beat in the 2025 NBA Finals for their first title in Oklahoma City?

Indiana Pacers: the series went to a seventh game, where the Pacers lost their star Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in the first quarter and the Thunder pulled away to win 103-91.

As of 2025, Oklahoma City's Triple-A Comets were the top farm club of which MLB team?

Los Angeles Dodgers: the club even played as the Oklahoma City Dodgers until 2023, and its new name salutes Mickey Mantle, the Oklahoma-born slugger nicknamed the Commerce Comet.

Oklahoma City has hosted which NCAA championship nearly every year since 1990?

Women's College World Series: softball's finals settled in the city in 1990 and have left only once, in 1996, when they were played at that summer's Olympic ballpark in Georgia.

Oklahoma City's two main airports are named for aviator Wiley Post and which humorist?

Will Rogers was Post's passenger when their plane came down near Point Barrow, Alaska, on August 15, 1935, so the city's two main airports are named for men who died in the same air crash.

Which Amtrak train links Oklahoma City's Santa Fe Depot to Fort Worth?

Heartland Flyer: the daily round trip began on June 14, 1999, and every October extra cars are coupled on for fans heading south to the Oklahoma-Texas football game in Dallas.

A sales tax Oklahoma City voters passed in 2009 paid for which downtown transit?

Streetcar system: the cars carried their first passengers on December 14, 2018, almost nine years to the day after the vote, and the city marked the start with a weekend of celebrations.

Who became mayor of Oklahoma City in April 2018?

David Holt had learned the job from the inside as his predecessor's chief of staff; a citizen of the Osage Nation, he was also the youngest mayor the city had sworn in since 1923.

Oklahoma City University, founded in 1904, is affiliated with which church?

United Methodist: the school began as Epworth University, a joint venture of two separate Methodist churches, northern and southern, which agreed in 1901 to own and run one university together.