Oklahoma City Audio Tours

Oklahoma City was founded in a single afternoon. On April 22, 1889, approximately 10,000 homesteaders staked their claims on what had been unassigned land, and a city appeared almost overnight where prairie had been that morning. By 1907 it was the state capital, and by 1928 oil had been discovered within the city limits, transforming the skyline and the economy in the same decade. The city spans 620 square miles, one of the ten largest in the United States by area, and sits squarely in Tornado Alley, where thirteen violent twisters have struck since 1890.

On April 19, 1995, a fertiliser bomb destroyed the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people in the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history up to that point. The Oklahoma City National Memorial now occupies that ground, with 168 empty chairs arranged on the grass where the building stood, each one a specific person. It is among the most affecting memorials in the country, and visiting it reorders everything else you see that day.