1. A state in south central United States; Also called: Sooner State.
2. Borough in Pennsylvania (USA).
State in S central us; nicknamed Sooner State.
Area 181,100 sq km/69,905 sq mi.
Capital Oklahoma City.
Towns and cities Tulsa, Lawton, Norman, Enid.
Features Arkansas, Red, and Canadian rivers; Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge; Ouachita national forest; Tallgrass Prairie Reserve; Grand Lake o’the Cherokees; Salt Plains national wildlife refuge, with whooping cranes and bald eagles; a large Native American population, mainly in the E, as a result of the 19th-century displacement of Native Americans to the Indian Territory; Fort Sill Military Reservation (1869), where Geronimo died 1909; Tahlequah, headquarters of the Cherokee Nation, with the Cherokee National Museum; Anadarko, with the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Craft Center, the National Hall of Fame for famous Native Americans, and Indian City us; Spiro Mounds Archeological state park, with the remains of earth mounds lived in by the Spiro 900–1400; Guthrie; Dog Iron Ranch and Will Rogers Birthplace; Will Rogers Memorial; Oklahoma City, including the Oklahoma state capitol (with oil wells in its grounds), Harn Homestead and 1889er Museum, and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage.
Center; Tulsa, with art deco architecture from the 1920s, and the Gilcrease Museum (with a collection of Native American art); Bartlesville, with the Frank Phillips home (1909) and the Price Tower (1956, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright); Woolacre Museum, a wildlife reserve with a museum of the West.
Industries cereals, peanuts, cotton, livestock, oil, natural gas, helium, machinery and other metal products.
Population (1990) 3,145,600.
Famous people John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, Woody Guthrie, Mickey Mantle, Will Rogers, Jim Thorpe.
History explored for Spain by Francisco de Coronado 1541; most acquired by the us from France with the Louisiana Purchase 1803.
The W Panhandle became us territory when Texas was annexed 1845. It was divided into Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory 1890, part of which was thrown open to settlers with lotteries and other hurried distribution of land. Together with what remained of Indian Territory, it became a state 1907.
Oil was struck 1897, and the state led all others in oil production until 1928. The 1930s brought drought, dust storms, and an exodus of many, especially to California. Economic growth resumed thereafter, particularly in the 1970s, when world oil prices rose.