Oklahoma

Oklahoma City

Inclusive

Reborn

Proud

Oklahoma City Pride parade ❘ Chon Kit Leong/Alamy

Murrah Federal Building Memorial ❘ Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Grey Sweater restaurant ❘ Courtesy Grey Sweater

Bricktown canal and Devon Tower ❘ Shane Bevel/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Plaza District ❘ David Pillow/Dreamstime

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Big city on the big prairie.

Visitors will find a city inching up vertically and culturally, as increasingly diverse residents and businesses fill out bustling neighborhoods, galleries, and emerging warehouse districts.

Not quite the Midwest, not fully the South, and not exactly the Southwest, Oklahoma City is hard to pin down—and that’s precisely its allure these days. Amidst a patchwork of freeways and Route 66 kitsch in what some people think of as flyover country, this on-the-rise metropolis is growing from road-trip stop to full-blown cultural destination. The kind of city mired in misconceptions, from overblown twisters to chicken-fried tropes, Oklahoma’s capital debunks stereotypes at every turn, offering a unique sense of discovery and distinct Americana unlike anywhere else.

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With nearly 700,000 residents, Oklahoma City recently surpassed cities such as Nashville and Washington, D.C., to become the nation’s 20th most populous. Downtown, along main north-south thoroughfares such as Classen Boulevard and Broadway Extension, visitors experience a city inching up vertically and culturally, as increasingly diverse residents and businesses fill out bustling neighborhoods, galleries, and emerging warehouse districts. It’s also surrounded by a vast, rural prairie teeming with roadrunners and lakes.

Paseo Arts District, originally known as the Spanish Village ❘ Matt Johnson/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed

Aptly nicknamed “The Modern Frontier,” it’s a place where the largest cattle market on Earth shares a harmonious zip code with Grey Sweater fine dining, as well as lore from the legendary Route 66, world-class arts such as the largest single-building tribal cultural center in the United States, and multiple Pride festivals. The Plaza District is an artsy and inclusive neighborhood known for its alleyway murals, historic theater, and queer-owned businesses such as Magoo’s Attic and Empire Slice House. In the 39th Street District, gay bars and drag shows populate a rainbow-clad thoroughfare. And the rapidly developing Wheeler District, an airport-turned-neighborhood, now teems with particularly cute new homes, night markets, and the Ferris wheel from the Santa Monica Pier.

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After the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) used a one-cent sales tax to rebuild the downtown core. The subsequent improvement programs revived a reeling city and catapulted it on a new trajectory that’s continued ever since. In addition to the powerful Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, other MAPS initiatives include the Bricktown Canal, more than 80 miles of interconnected urban trails, and Scissortail Park, a 70-acre oasis of lush greenery, farmers’ markets, festivals, and recreation that links the core to the Oklahoma River.

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— Matt Kirouac