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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...
Tulsa 1923 summer fun
What did Tulsans do 100 years ago to escape the summer heat? Some answers can be found in a little clipping I saved during some research on Tulsa's streetcars and electric interurban railroads.
Segregation by Design: Greenwood and I-244
Tulsa is the focus of another recent article from a UK newspaper website: A story in the Guardian Online about the impact of expressway construction on Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood, and the possibility of reviving the neighborhood by removing the north leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop. Twenty-five years before Don...
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...
Tulsa detention pond threatens Paul Harvey's neighborhood
A stormwater detention pond planned by the City of Tulsa is displacing owners of historic homes, affecting Paul Harvey's childhood neighborhood.
Mapping Tulsa: historical maps on exhibit downtown
Mapping Tulsa, a diverse collection of historical maps illustrating Tulsa's history and culture, is on display at the Henry Zarrow Center gallery, at the southwest corner of Brady Street and Cincinnati Avenue in Tulsa's Bob Wills Arts District. The gallery is open noon to 6 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and...
Santa Fe, Taos, Aspen and back
Late last night we returned from a quick five-day, nearly 2,000-mile trip to Aspen, Colorado, by way of Amarillo, Santa Fe, Taos, Buena Vista, the Great Sand Dunes, Capulin Volcano, and Black Mesa. We packed a lot into a short trip. Some notes: Downtown El Reno has a very nice...
"There is no Negro business district anymore"
Relevant to yesterday's post on the Smithsonian Channel documentary that misrepresented the history of Greenwood, Tulsa's historic African-American neighborhood that its residents rebuilt after it was sacked and burned in the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. The rebuilt neighborhood thrived and prospered for decades, becoming known as Black Wall Street, before urban renewal and expressway construction destroyed it again in the late 1960s. Here is a news story from the time that illustrates the social and financial impact of the decision to route the expressway through the heart of the Deep Greenwood commercial district.
Oklahoma earthquake forum, TU ACAC, 2016/09/07
UPDATE: I will be on 1170 KFAQ at 7:05 am on Thursday morning, September 8, 2016, to discuss the forum with Pat Campbell. My partial notes are below: Quite a wake-up we had Saturday morning! Not just a brief rumble, but sustained vibration. It was strange to open my eyes...
James Garner's "hometown": Denver school and Denver Corner near Norman
Actor James Garner, born James Scott Bumgarner near Norman, Oklahoma, died this weekend at the age of 86. Articles about James Garner and his brother Jack report that their parents ran a general store at Denver Corner. The area is now within the city limits of Norman, but it was...
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...
Kathy Taylor's runoff problem
Runoff was one of the topics mentioned in Tulsa mayoral candidate Bill Christiansen's press conference on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, about the questionable ethics of his principal opponents, former mayor Kathy Taylor and incumbent mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. The runoff under discussion isn't the election that will be held in...
Oklahoma's record Guy Fawkes Day quake: 5.6 magnitude
Another earthquake struck Oklahoma tonight at 10:53 p.m. local time on November 5, 2011. The USGS has designated it a 5.6 magnitude, the strongest Oklahoma earthquake on record. If you felt it, please tell the USGS what you noticed by filling out a brief online survey. At our house in...
Did you feel it? 4.7 earthquake near Prague, OK, at 2:12 am
In the wee hours of this morning, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake hit Oklahoma. Epicenter was just north of the town of Prague (rhymes with plague -- seriously), about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, and about 60 miles southwest of Tulsa. The US Geological Survey wants to know if you...
The old paths: Historic Oklahoma USGS maps
My apologies for the lapse since my last post. I've been writing, but it's all technical stuff for the gig that pays most of the bills. While I was at the Coffee House on Cherry Street cranking away on that technical documentation, a customer at the next table, a gentleman...
Tulsa streetcar and interurban lines in Google Maps
In response to a thread at TulsaNow's public forum, here is a map showing the routes of Tulsa's three streetcar/interurban lines: Red is the Tulsa Street Railway, blue is Oklahoma Union Traction, and green is the Sand Springs Railway. The latter two lines had interurban routes to Sapulpa and Kiefer...
Historical quads
The U. S. Geological Survey is mapmaker to the Federal Government, but their topographical maps are used by ranchers, hikers, hydrologists, miners -- anyone interested in the shape of the land and what lies beneath. Because they also depict cultural features in rural areas -- roads, houses, schools, churches, cemetaries...
Bates Motel really existed (sort of), right here in Tulsa
(Image originally from AlanOfTulsa on fotothing.com; direct link to photo.) One more Route 66 related entry. Someone called alanoftulsa posted this postcard with the following info on the TulsaNow forum. The doings at cousin Norman's place almost sound tame compared to the real-life Bates Tourist Hotel. Because of the conditions...
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