Oklahoma

At noon on April 22, 1889, a cannon fired and roughly 50,000 people raced across the border to claim land on what had been Indian Territory. By sundown, Oklahoma City and Guthrie each held around 10,000 settlers. Streets were laid out, town lots staked, and local governments forming before dark.

Some settlers had snuck in early to grab the best spots. They were called "Sooners," and the nickname stuck to the whole state.

That land had been promised to Native peoples. Starting in the 1830s, the U.S. government forced the Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole from their homelands in the Southeast and marched them to Indian Territory.

Thousands died of disease, cold, and hunger along the way. The forced march became known as the Trail of Tears.

Then the government broke its own promise. Through a series of land runs and laws, it opened nearly all of Indian Territory to white settlers. Oklahoma became the 46th state in 1907.

Oil changed everything. After a major discovery near Tulsa in 1901, boomtowns sprang up across the state.

Tulsa's Greenwood District, known as "Black Wall Street," became one of the wealthiest Black communities in America, with its own hospitals, hotels, and newspapers. On May 31, 1921, a white mob destroyed 35 blocks in less than two days, killing as many as 300 people. The city tried to hide what happened for decades.

The 1930s Dust Bowl hit Oklahoma harder than almost anywhere. Drought and poor farming practices turned fields to dust, and thousands of families packed up and left. Woody Guthrie, born in Okemah, wrote songs about their struggle that became American classics.

Explore the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur and the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation since 1839. Walk through the Greenwood Rising history center in Tulsa. Visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, where 168 empty chairs glow at night honoring those lost in the 1995 bombing.