Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the US state of Oklahoma. The city’s history began on April 22, 1889, when the settlement of Oklahoma was opened in the so-called Land Run. About 10,000 settled in the area that became Oklahoma City, and the population doubled the following decade. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state in the United States, and after a short time the state capital was moved from Guthrie to Oklahoma City, which was already the largest city at that time.

Oklahoma City became an important stop on Route 66, and meat production developed the city until oil was discovered in 1928, after which the oil industry boomed. During the 1930s, it was expanded with a new Civic Center as part of the public works through the depression years, and later modern high-rises have been erected and they revitalized several places in the city’s downtown.

Today you can make some nice walks in central Oklahoma City, where there are several sights and attractions. You can start the tour in Bicentennial Park, an open urban space with the town hall Municipal Building to the east and the Civic Center Music Hall to the west. These are two buildings that, along with the Oklahoma County Courthouse behind City Hall and the police headquarters behind the concert hall, were built in the late 1930s as public buildings during the depression of the decade. Old railway land was bought for the purpose, and the four buildings were erected as a new Civic Center in the city.

The architectural style is the so-called Public Works Administration modern, which set the tone in large public buildings during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives, and the style used features ornamentation from Art Deco, Art Moderne and Beaux-Arts. When in the area, you can also see the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, which is an art museum with its own art collection and a venue for changing exhibitions.

In downtown Oklahoma City, you will find other architecturally interesting buildings as well, such as the City Place Tower, which was built in Art Deco and inaugurated in 1931. If you go south from the City Place Tower, you come to the 44-meter-high Colcord Hotel, which opened in 1909 as the Colcord Building, and it was the first skyscraper in Oklahoma City.

The neighboring building is the modern Devon Tower, which was constructed 2009-2012 and opened as the tallest building in the state of Oklahoma at 257 meters. Right in front of the Devon Tower, you can take a nice walk in the Myriad Botanical Gardens, which is a combination of a city park with various activities and a botanical garden. In the center of the park stands the Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory with palm trees, waterfalls and exotic flowers and animals.

In the northern part of downtown was The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed by a bombing on April 19, 1995, with countless deaths and injuries as victims. After the destruction, the rest of the building was torn down, and the area transformed into the Oklahoma City National Memorial Park. In the memorial park you can see two large bronze gates with the time markings 9:01 and 9:03, which were respectively the last minute of peace and the first minute of healing. South of here is the Field of Empty Chairs, with a chair for each of the tragedy’s 168 victims, who stand in a pattern indicating their position when the bomb exploded.

From here, continue a few blocks north to the Automobile Alley neighborhood, centered along N Broadway Avenue. It is a neighborhood characterized by its many brick houses from the 1920s and the neon signs of the time. The name Automobile Alley comes from the many car dealers that were once located here, while today you can visit several shops and restaurants in the old setting.

There is a large government district northeast of downtown Oklahoma City with the Oklahoma State Capitol as the centerpiece. The State Capitol is the government building of the state of Oklahoma. The city of Guthrie was the state’s first capital from 1890, and twenty years later the citizens of the state decided to move the capital to Oklahoma City, and therefore a new government building had to be built. The Capitol building was constructed 1914-1917, but the planned dome was not built until 2001-2002 after initially being postponed due to budget overruns.

In front of the Capitol, you can see a derrick and oil plant, which is because the Capitol itself stands on top of part of the large oil field, the Oklahoma City Oil Field. Around the building you can see other government buildings, offices, a library and the Oklahoma History Center, which is an interesting museum that tells the story of the state in an exciting way.

You can see a beautiful part of the newer Oklahoma City if you follow the Bricktown Canal, which opened as a new waterway through parts of the city in 1999. You can board a lovely cruise on the canal that flows through Oklahoma City’s from the Bricktown neighborhood and the art deco railroad station from 1934 to an area close to the Oklahoma River. Along the canal there are cafés and restaurants and various sights and activities.

At the end of the canal, you can see the Centennial Land Run Monument, which is a group of sculptures commemorating the settlement of Oklahoma in 1889. At the monument, you can walk from Bricktown Canal to Bricktown Landing, one of the places where you can board a river cruise on Oklahoma River. The sailings take place between Bricktown and Regatta in the east and Meridian Landing in the west. Along the way, you pass the large area of ​​cattle and meat production, the Oklahoma National Stockyards, located on the south side of the river.