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Tulsa and Oklahoma historical maps and aerial photos
What was here? Who owned it? What did it look like? There are a number of resources available for reconstructing Oklahoma's geographical past, and they're easier to use than ever. These are my go-tos when researching the history of a neighborhood or answering questions about the past. This is an...
Chinese Communist-funded program on Tulsa school board agenda
The Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, at a special meeting tomorrow, Thursday, July 14, 2022, at 1 p.m., will consider accepting a grant from a non-profit funded and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party for a Chinese language learning program at Booker T. Washington High School. Here is...
Tulsa in the 1920 Official Automobile Blue Book
Before Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, before state highway officials collaborated to create a national highway numbering system in 1926, motorists traveling cross-country followed turn-by-turn directions contained in the Official Automobile Blue Book. These books are a time capsule of transportation history, not only mentioning routes, but road conditions, locations of...
1946 Tulsa County precincts
Newspapers.com has some amazing content that can help to locate long-lost rural places around Tulsa. I was searching for information about Bethel Union School, later known as Paul Revere School (which I wrote about in conjunction with the centennial of Southern Hills Baptist Church), and I found a legal notice...
2021 School & Municipal General Election: BatesLine ballot card
Below are my thoughts on some of the races in the Oklahoma school board and municipal general election on April 6, 2021, along with links to candidate websites, social media profiles, and candidate forums for elections and bond issues on Tuesday's ballot in Tulsa County.
Preserve the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge
Tulsa's Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge and Zink Lake Dam viewed from the west bank, south of the bridge and dam, February 14, 2016 Resistance is gathering to the plan to demolish the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge across the Arkansas River. Although an engineering analysis from 2015 shows that the 110-year-old...
Improve our Tulsa 2: Why You Should Vote Against the Street Package
Brent Isaacs, a native Tulsan and city planner active for many years in advocating for a better Tulsa, has has written a piece below about why you should to vote against the first item on the November 12, 2019, Tulsa ballot. Labeled on the first sheet of the ballot as...
Bynum IV outsources Tulsa city planning to INCOG, reversing earlier stand
I am getting caught up on the local news after all the pre-Christmas busyness and was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that Mayor G. T. Bynum IV has shut down our city planning department and outsourced the task of evaluating the future direction of city development to a quasi-non-governmental...
Joe Newhouse for Oklahoma Senate District 25
UPDATE 2016/06/24: Bob Jack contacted me this morning, and we spoke a short time ago, taking exception to some of the things I wrote below. I have made some additions based on our conversation which are highlighted below. FURTHER UPDATE 2016/06/25: At my invitation, Bob Jack has sent a reply,...
1967 Tulsa USGS aerial photos
Tulsa history expert Paul Uttinger pointed me to a couple of amazing U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) aerial photos from 1967. It captures an interesting point in time, as land was beginning to be cleared for I-244 and the Inner Dispersal Loop. Tulsa had, about a year earlier, tripled its...
Bill Christiansen for Tulsa Mayor
Another day, another mendacious attack mailer from Dewey Bartlett Jr. If I had known there were enough Tulsans who objected to rising city budgets, county tax initiatives, the City Hall move, the Great Plains Airlines bailout, and accepting Federal stimulus money to justify a mail piece targeting those concerns, I...
Roscoe Turner endorses Bill Christiansen for Mayor of Tulsa
Former City Councilor Roscoe Turner has announced his endorsement of his long-time Council colleague Bill Christiansen in the 2013 race for Mayor of Tulsa. Christiansen will face two other announced candidates, incumbent Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. and former Mayor Kathy Taylor. From the Christiansen campaign news release: In welcoming...
Vision2: Tulsa County's bait-and-switch habit
"I think the worst thing you could do is promise you are going to build something and then not have enough money to build it." -- then Tulsa County Commissioner Bob Dick, July 2003 I had been looking at these items in isolation, but I'm beginning to see a pattern...
Tulsa County Commissioners put Vision2 (ObamaVision) on November ballot
The Tulsa County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Monday morning, to the disappointment of many and the surprise of none, to put a 13-year sales tax extension on the ballot this coming November, more than four years before the tax is scheduled to expire. The package is being called Vision2...
Tulsa Election 2011: Democrat Suliburk the conservative in District 8
In the previous entry, I mentioned a candidate survey issued by OK-SAFE -- Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise. Say what you will about OK-SAFE and their views, but the group's questionnaire gets into the details of real questions facing City of Tulsa officials, and they allow candidates to respond...
Tulsa District 3 Democratic primary: For Roscoe Turner
This is the ninth rematch between current District 3 Councilor Roscoe Turner and former Councilor David Patrick. The series is tied 4-4, with Patrick winning in 1996, 1998, 2002, and 2008, and Turner winning in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009. (Turner also won the 1998 special election, beating Patrick's sister Synna.)...
The 2009 District 8 race
District 8 is a tough race for me. During his seven years on the City Council, Bill Christiansen has disappointed me over and over again. Early on, he worked to undermine and oppose some positive initiatives from my reform friends on the Council -- for example, the future growth task...
Tulsa campaign roundup
Steven Roemerman has a couple of new entries about local elections worth your attention. He follows up on a question that a talk show host asked him when he called in to express his support for Chris Medlock: "Do you really think Medlock can beat Tom Adelson?" Roemerman answers that...
Taylor tells feds Bixby Bridge is "ready to go"
Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has included the controversial proposed bridge across the Arkansas River at Yale Ave. in a laundry list of city infrastructure projects that Taylor says are ready for immediate funding. Taylor's wish list is part of a collection of over 11,000 projects compiled by the U. S....
The Road to April Fool's Day
An edited version of this column appeared in the March 26, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted on August 4, 2018. The Road to April Fool's Day By Michael D. Bates Tulsa goes to vote next Tuesday, April 1. The main...
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