Just across the highway from the Oklahoma State Capitol is the state’s history museum, a Smithsonian affiliate. There are three galleries on Enterprise, Native Americans and state history. It doesn’t matter where you start.
Early industry consisted of stockyards to sell cattle, slaughterhouses to kill them, and packing plants to sell them. The land also grew cotton, which fetched up to $50 an acre for good quality by 1900. In contrast, wheat and corn only yielded about $10 an acre. The state later became a major oil producer in the US, but suffered after the Second World War when imported oil lowered crude prices. Later in the century, Love’s truck stops and the nation’s most popular drive-in restaurant chain Sonic both began life in the state.
There’s a little space exhibit in the corner of the grout floor with an Apollo Command Module From a Skylab mission. I had a look around the Native American exhibit and decided the First Americans Museum on the other side of Oklahoma City already covered a lot of it.
Upstairs galleries start on the right with the land runs of the 1880s to claim 160 acres of “free” land, it then goes all the way to segregation. The left gallery has substantial information on the state’s contribution to the oil industry, such as a replica of the first test burner in the world in 1951. There’s also a nice two-story exhibit on the paddleboat Heroine and river travel.
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