Oklahoma Facts and Trivia
1. On July 25, 2000, Governor Keating announced plans to construct a dome on the Oklahoma State Capitol Building. Construction is slated to begin April 2001 with an estimated completion date of November 2002.
2. The world’s first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935. Carl C. Magee, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is generally credited with originating the parking meter. He filed for a patent for a “coin controlled parking meter” on May 13, 1935.
3. Vinita is the oldest incorporated town on Oklahoma Route 66 being established in 1871. Vinita was the first town in Oklahoma to enjoy electricity. Originally named Downingville. The towns name was later changed to Vinita, in honor of Vinnie Ream, the sculptress who created the life-size statue of Lincoln at the United States Capitol.
4. During a tornado in Ponca City, a man and his wife were carried aloft in their house by a tornado. The walls and roof were blown away. But the floor remained intact and eventually glided downward, setting the couple safely back on the ground.
5. The Amateur Softball Association of America – a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organization based in Oklahoma City, OK – was founded in 1933 and has evolved into the strongest softball organization in the country.
6. A statue entitled “Hopes and Dreams,” in downtown Perry was created by local sculptor Bill Bennett and placed there on a massive granite pedestal as a Cherokee Strip Centennial memorial. The statue portrays an early-day couple coming to the newly opened western frontier.
7. Turner Falls Park in Davis is the oldest park in Oklahoma. Many springs from the world famous Arbuckle Mountains form Honey Creek that cascades down a seventy-seven foot fall to a natural swimming pool making the majestic Turner Falls the largest waterfall in Oklahoma.
8. There is an operating oil well on state capitol grounds called Capitol Site No. 1.
9. Anadarko is home to the only authentic Indian City in the United States. It is located in the beautiful Washita river valley in southwest Oklahoma.
10. In 1998, a life size statue of a cattle drive, titled “On the Chisholm Trail,” was set in place in Duncan as a monument to the American Cowboy.
11. Phillip H. Sheridan, George A. Custer and William T. Sherman were the founders of the USA’s main artillery fort at Fort Sill.
12. Born in 1879 on a large ranch in the Cherokee Nation near what later would become Oologah, Oklahoma, Will Rogers was first an Indian, a cowboy then a national figure. Will Rogers was a star of Broadway and 71 movies of the 1920s and 1930s, a popular broadcaster and wrote more than 4,000 syndicated newspaper columns.