99 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.

Oklahoma City's Wheeler District Ferris wheel, bought on eBay in 2008, first stood on which California city's pier?

Santa Monica put its old Pacific Wheel up for online auction, and Oklahoma developer Grant Humphreys won the bidding. The ride reopened beside the Oklahoma River in 2016.

Which city won the National Finals Rodeo from Oklahoma City, its host for two decades, with a 1984 bid?

Las Vegas won even though Oklahoma City's council weighed building a $30 million arena to keep the event, which had been bringing local merchants an estimated $8 million a year.

Which 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Harvard law professor was born in Oklahoma City?

Elizabeth Warren was a star of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School, winning the state championship and a college debate scholarship at the age of 16.

Which Gulf War veteran was executed in 2001 for carrying out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing?

Timothy McVeigh was pulled over within 90 minutes of the blast for driving without a licence plate. He became the first federal prisoner put to death since 1963.

Which team beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 NBA Finals, handing LeBron James his first title?

Miami Heat lost the opening game in Oklahoma City and then won four straight. The Thunder did not reach the Finals again until 2025.

Which Oklahoma City Thunder guard was named NBA MVP after averaging a triple-double across the 2016–17 season?

Russell Westbrook was only the second player to average a triple-double over a full season, after Oscar Robertson, whose single-season mark for triple-doubles he also beat that year.

Which family-owned truck stop chain, begun in 1964 at a leased filling station, is headquartered in Oklahoma City?

Love's started when Tom and Judy Love borrowed $5,000 from her parents to lease an abandoned service station, and it grew into a chain of more than 600 travel stops.

Oklahoma City was chosen to host softball and which water sport's events at the 2028 Summer Olympics?

Canoe slalom and softball were sent about 1,300 miles from the California host city to cut costs, because it had no suitable venue of its own for either sport.

Oklahoma City's Asian District took shape after thousands of refugees arrived in 1975 from which country?

Vietnam's refugees reached Oklahoma City by way of a resettlement camp at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, and the neighbourhood they made home was soon nicknamed Little Saigon.

Which Broadway star, who originated the role of Glinda in Wicked, earned two degrees at Oklahoma City University?

Kristin Chenoweth grew up in Broken Arrow and took both her bachelor's and master's at the university, which gave her an honorary doctorate in 2013.

Which future NBA MVP did the Oklahoma City Thunder trade to Houston months after he won Sixth Man of the Year?

James Harden left before the 2012–13 season because the Thunder would not offer him a maximum contract and he would not take a pay cut. He ended the decade as the league's leading scorer.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard named 2025 league MVP and Finals MVP, comes from which country?

Canada produced the Thunder's title-winning star: he was born in Toronto and grew up in nearby Hamilton, and he led Oklahoma City to its first championship since the franchise moved.

Which energy company's name was on the Oklahoma City Thunder's home arena from 2011 to 2021?

Chesapeake Energy signed a 12-year naming deal in 2011 that ended early, when the building became Paycom Center. The arena had opened in 2002 as the Ford Center.

Which architect, later famous for the Louvre Pyramid, drew up the 1960s plan to rebuild downtown Oklahoma City?

I. M. Pei's plan called for demolishing hundreds of older downtown buildings to form superblocks. Offices and parking followed, but the shops and housing it was meant to attract largely never came.

Which Oklahoma City ice cream and burger chain keeps every store within about 330 miles of its own dairy farm?

Braum's draws that line so products from its home farm in Tuttle arrive fresh. Bill Braum opened 24 stores in the chain's first year, 1968.

Which amusement park in Oklahoma's capital grew out of a replica pioneer town built for the 1957 semicentennial?

Frontier City let visitors in free when it opened in 1958 but charged a quarter to watch its gunfight shows. Founder Jimmy Burge was a former Hollywood publicist impressed by Disneyland.

Which sport has been staged at Oklahoma City's Remington Park since the venue opened in 1988?

Horse racing at Remington Park runs in two seasons, Quarter Horses in spring and Thoroughbreds in autumn. The track was built by mall developer Edward J. DeBartolo Sr.

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was timed for the second anniversary of the fiery end of which federal standoff?

Waco siege anger drove the plot: the Branch Davidian compound burned on April 19, 1993, a date the bomber also prized as the anniversary of the first battles of the American Revolution.

Which Oklahoma City lake, named for a 1940s mayor, has a working replica of a Nantucket lighthouse?

Lake Hefner was first called the Bluff Creek Reservoir. Its 36-foot lighthouse copies Brant Point Light, and a boat club sails weekly contests there in summer.

Which Will & Grace star, an Emmy winner as Karen Walker, grew up in Oklahoma City from the age of six?

Megan Mullally performed with the Oklahoma City Ballet while she was at high school there, then left to study English literature and art history at Northwestern University.

Which six-time NBA All-Star, taken first in the 2009 draft by the Clippers, was born in Oklahoma City?

Blake Griffin once finished a high school game against Oklahoma City Southeast with 41 points, 28 rebounds and 10 assists.

A bronze statue of which New York Yankees slugger, raised in Commerce, stands outside Oklahoma City's downtown ballpark?

Mickey Mantle stands seven and a half feet tall in bronze at the third-base entrance, and the ballpark's street address is on a drive that carries his name.

What name was given to settlers who staked 1889 claims around Oklahoma City before the legal start?

Sooners took an illegal head start on the best claims, yet the name stuck so well that Oklahoma came to call itself the Sooner State.

Which city about 20 miles south of Oklahoma City is home to the University of Oklahoma's main campus?

Norman got the university in 1890, about 17 years before Oklahoma became a state, and it has grown into the second-largest city in the metropolitan area.

Oklahoma City's First National Center, a skyscraper finished in 1931, closely resembles which New York landmark?

Empire State Building lookalike or not, the Oklahoma tower rose in under a year: construction began in February 1931 and was finished by November.

Which young ventriloquist from the Oklahoma City area won the twelfth season of America's Got Talent in 2017?

Darci Lynne first drew national attention on Little Big Shots in 2016, and she missed her first day of seventh grade to appear live on the talent show.

Which Oklahoma City-born quarterback won the 2008 Heisman Trophy and was the first pick of the 2010 NFL draft?

Sam Bradford was only the second sophomore to win the Heisman. At Putnam City North High School he had also starred in basketball, baseball and golf.

Which seven-time Olympic medal-winning gymnast of the 1990s grew up in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond?

Shannon Miller's home state named a stretch of Interstate 35 through Edmond after her in 1998, and a park there holds an 18-foot bronze statue of the gymnast.

Which Hall of Fame Cincinnati Reds catcher of the 1970s Big Red Machine was born in Oklahoma City?

Johnny Bench was a truck driver's son whose family settled in the small town of Binger, about 60 miles west of the city, when he was around five.

Which Oklahoma City district was a 1920s jazz hub that shaped guitarist Charlie Christian?

Deep Deuce also nurtured blues shouter Jimmy Rushing and drew Count Basie and Lester Young, and by the 1940s it was the city's largest African-American downtown neighbourhood.

Which Queen of Rockabilly, who toured with and briefly dated Elvis Presley, went to high school in Oklahoma City?

Wanda Jackson already had her own Oklahoma City radio show as a teenager, and she later credited Presley with encouraging her to record rock and roll.

Which horror star of 1941's The Wolf Man was born in Oklahoma City to a pair of touring stage performers?

Lon Chaney Jr. was born Creighton Chaney in 1906, and from 1941 his studio insisted on billing him under the name of his famous late father.

Which name is used for downtown Oklahoma City's network of pedestrian tunnels, first opened as the Conncourse?

The Underground began with a 1930s passage linking two hotels on opposite sides of Broadway, and a 2006 facelift was meant to turn the dated tunnels into a walk-in work of art.

Under which name was Oklahoma City's Science Museum Oklahoma known from 1978 until 2007?

Omniplex grew out of a planetarium founded in 1958, which moved to a permanent home at the state fairgrounds four years later.

Which nickname did Oklahoma City's Triple-A baseball team use from 1962 to 1997?

89ers baseball was played at All Sports Stadium, and the club swapped the name for RedHawks in 1998.

Which Oklahoma City energy company ran the plutonium plant where whistleblower Karen Silkwood worked in the 1970s?

Kerr-McGee's Cimarron plant was where Silkwood was investigating safety violations before her death in November 1974, the story told in the 1983 film that bears her name.

Oklahoma City sprang up in which tract of some two million acres opened to settlers by President Benjamin Harrison?

Unassigned Lands were so called because no tribe had been settled on them, and by the end of opening day Oklahoma City already held around 10,000 people.

The Oklahoma in Oklahoma City comes from two words meaning 'red people' in which Native American language?

Choctaw leader Allen Wright proposed the name during treaty negotiations with the federal government after the Civil War, joining okla, 'people', to humma, 'red'.

Which highway from California to North Carolina was rerouted a mile south through downtown Oklahoma City by 2012?

I-40 is the third-longest interstate in the country, and its old Crosstown bridge through downtown was replaced by a ground-level boulevard.

Which telephone area code, one of AT&T's 1947 originals, has served Oklahoma City ever since?

405 covered the whole of Oklahoma until 1953, when the northeast was split off, and it ended up as the state's only area code that does not touch a neighbouring state.

The landmark steakhouse in Oklahoma City's Stockyards City changed owners in 1945 on the outcome of what?

A roll of dice settled it when gambler Hank Fry staked the restaurant against Gene Wade's life savings on a hard six. The winning 33 is still branded on a dining-room wall.

Which Oklahoma City arts district was built in 1929 as the Spanish Village, the first retail area north of downtown?

Paseo still has its stucco buildings and tiled roofs, and its galleries open new shows together for a gallery walk on the first Friday of every month.

Which Pop artist behind the photo book Twentysix Gasoline Stations spent about 15 boyhood years in Oklahoma City?

Ed Ruscha was born in Nebraska, and in 1956 he drove west from Oklahoma to California in a 1950 Ford sedan, hoping to get into art school.

Which Native American art market and dance festival was launched in Oklahoma City in 1987 by arts advocates?

Red Earth grew out of a Native-run cultural centre and art gallery founded in 1978, and the two organisations merged in 1992.

Who took office in 1971 as Oklahoma City's first woman mayor and held the job for twelve years?

Patience Latting had already broken ground in 1967 as the first woman elected to the city council, and she went on to serve three four-year terms as mayor.

Which Oklahoma City oil well blew out in 1930 and sprayed crude for eleven days before crews capped it?

Wild Mary Sudik was tamed only on the third attempt, and the blowout pushed drillers to adopt blowout preventers as standard equipment.

Which Oklahoma City TV weatherman was the first to warn viewers of a tornado using commercial Doppler radar?

Gary England joined the city's CBS station KWTV in 1972, and he later turned up as a weather announcer in the 1996 storm-chasing film Twister.

Which Oklahoma City businessman led the group that bought the future Thunder franchise from Howard Schultz in 2006?

Clay Bennett's group paid about $350 million and promised a good-faith effort to keep the team where it was if a new arena won public backing. Two years later it moved.

The Oklahoma City Thunder's name honours storms and which Army unit, nicknamed the Thunderbirds, long based in the city?

45th Infantry guardsmen, headquartered in Oklahoma City for most of the division's history, fought in the 1943 invasion of Sicily and later in the Korean War.

Which R&B vocal group behind the 1991 hit I Wanna Sex You Up formed at an Oklahoma City high school?

Color Me Badd recorded their debut single for the New Jack City soundtrack after several other acts had turned the song down. The four singers had met as schoolmates in the mid-1980s.