Oklahoma City is the centrally located state capital of a
state best known for a Rogers and Hammerstein play set in the state that was
made into a movie and for being at the heart of America’s “Tornado Alley” . It
seems as though an inordinate number of natural disasters hit the Oklahoma City
area, including the worst monster tornadoes that destroy everything in their
path.

The other disaster for which Oklahoma City has notoriety is
the 1995 bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh which
killed 168 people and injured almost 700 others, the worst act of domestic
terrorism in U.S. history. The area around where it took place is now a
memorial and museum that’s now a National Park system unit and probably the
most visited spot in the city. I wandered around it as part of my walk through
the city, still a poignant spot. I recall being at work at the State Capitol
building in Denver when I first heard about it as we went on to a kind of
lockdown before I knew what happened.

For a metropolitan area with a population over one million,
downtown Oklahoma City isn’t all that impressive. There are a few tall office
buildings and a historic warehouse area named Bricktown which has been
transformed into a retail and entertainment district in an attempt to bring
more people downtown, but I’m not sure how successful this attempt at urban
renaissance has been in what by some measures is America’s most spread out metropolitan
area. One statistic I read at some point is that the Oklahoma City metro area
has the highest per capita gasoline consumption of any in the country, since
people have to drive everywhere and the distances are vast .

The downtown attraction that was of most interest to me is
the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. I usually go to the art museum whenever I’m in
a city (if there is one). Oklahoma City’s doesn’t have much of a reputation,
but one thing I found interesting is that it has the largest permanent
collection of art glass works by Seattle artist Dale Chihuly of any museum.
There’s also a fair collection of American art with a focus on the American
West and some impressionist paintings, but overall I found it quite small by
art museum standards and nothing like the Gilcrease and Philbrook Museums in
Tulsa.

In keeping with the theme of things in Oklahoma City being
very spread out, even the state Capitol building and government complex are
located a few miles away from the city’s downtown. In almost other state
capital cities the capitol building is smack dab in the heart of the city
around which the city has grown. And it’s not that it’s a new capitol building
either. It was finished in 1917, a few years after the state capitol was moved
from Guthrie. However, it is not really accurate to say it was finished them
since the dome wasn’t completed until 2002. The building must have looked
pretty odd for the more than seven decades it lacked a dome. The grandiose
building bears some resemblance to the national capitol building in Washington.
It sits on large grounds above an oil field and has the only working oil rigs
on the grounds of a state capitol building in the U .S.

Another of Oklahoma City’s attractions is the Stockyards
City, the complex of all goods and services western that grew up around one of
the largest cattle stockyards in the country. Like everything in Oklahoma City,
it involves a bit of a drive since it’s located a few miles southwest of
downtown. It was recommended to me by friends that I eat at the Cattlemen’s Café,
a stockyards area steakhouse said to be a favorite of former president George
W. Bush. I don’t particularly trust Dubya’s tastes or judgements, but figured I’d
eat there since it’s the place to go. I naturally had a big slab of medium rare
prime rib with a baked potato. It doesn’t get any more Oklahoma than that!