Oklahoma City & Route 66
It may be hard not to assume that the farm-life images of the musical Oklahoma are true for the entire state. However, while Oklahoma as a whole tends to be conservative and inspires nostalgia for a simple slower pace of life, sophistication is not precluded. The vision and sensitivity with which the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum were established, in honour of those who died in the 1995 bombing, attest to this. So do the state’s well-preserved architectural gems; remnants of the Oklahoma oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s, which include the Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, the only completed skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Art Deco buildings of Tulsa.
Oklahoma is also home to the longest driveable stretch of the historic Route 66 with nearly 400 miles of ‘America’s Main Street’. Visitors will find landmarks in roadside architecture, including the Blue Whale and Totem Pole Park, on this original highway to the West