Oklahoma

Oil rig in a wheat field

map of Oklahoma

Oklahoma, constituent state of the United States of America. It borders Colorado and Kansas to the north, Missouri and Arkansas to the east, Texas to the south and west, and New Mexico to the west of its Panhandle region. In its land and its people, Oklahoma is a state of contrast and of the unexpected. The terrain varies from the rolling, timbered hills of the east to the treeless high plains that extend from the Panhandle region into Texas and New Mexico. Oklahoma’s east-central region is dominated by the lowlands of the Arkansas River, sweeping in from Colorado and Kansas, and by the Red River, which forms nearly all of its southern border with Texas. The capital is Oklahoma City, near the centre of the state.

The word Oklahoma is derived from two Choctaw words: okla, “people,” and humma, “red.” During the 19th century the future state was a symbol of one of the least glorious chapters in American history, becoming known as Indian Territory, the dumping ground for eastern Native American tribes displaced by settlers’ ever-increasing hunger for land. Since its admission in 1907 as the 46th state of the union, however, Oklahoma has achieved an integration of its Native American citizens into modern economic and social life that probably is unmatched by any other state. There is no reservation in the usual sense for the Native American population. Though poverty is endemic among them, many Oklahoma Indians have risen to positions of distinction, and tribal revenue distributions have enabled many more to share in the great wealth that petroleum resources have brought to the state.

Once basically agricultural—and the Dust Bowl locale of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath—Oklahoma now has hundreds of lakes, many of them man-made, and an increasingly diversified economy in which tourism is ever more important. The customs of the Deep South are maintained in the habits and attitudes of southern Oklahoma—“Little Dixie”—despite the decline in cotton production. The customs of the wheat growers in the north, however, reflect their largely Kansan origins. Area 69,899 square miles (181,037 square km). Population (2020) 3,959,353; (2022 est.) 4,019,800.