All Things Oklahoma

All Things Oklahoma All Things Oklahoma explores the people, places, history, culture, sports, food, businesses, events, outdoors and stories that shape the state.

Discover local favorites, hidden history, current developments and the unexpected sides of Oklahoma.

10/01/2026

The Oklahoma State Running Back Who Produced the Greatest Single Season in College Football History

Barry Sanders arrived at Oklahoma State in 1986 as a little-known recruit from Wichita, Kansas, and spent his first two seasons in Stillwater largely in the background. He returned kicks. He played behind more prominent backs. He was not the story. Then came 1988, and everything changed in a way that college football is still measuring thirty-seven years later. 🏈

In that single season Sanders rushed for 2,628 yards, scored 39 touchdowns, and averaged 238 rushing yards per game across a schedule that included serious competition. Every record he broke in 1988 had belonged to the previous standard for years. He broke them by margins so wide that the numbers looked like errors. The cuts he made in the open field were not plays people had seen before. Defenders who played against him that season still talk about it the way people describe something they are not sure others will fully believe. 🏆

Sanders won the Heisman Trophy in a landslide vote and left Oklahoma State after his junior season for the NFL Draft. The Detroit Lions selected him third overall in 1989, and he went on to a Hall of Fame career that reinforced everything that 1988 Oklahoma season had promised. He retired in 1999 needing just 1,457 yards to break Walter Payton's all-time rushing record. But the season Oklahoma State fans will never stop talking about is the one that put him on the map. Stillwater gave the football world something it had never seen before. 🌟

John Steinbeck set the opening of The Grapes of Wrath in the red dirt country around Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and if you have...
10/01/2026

John Steinbeck set the opening of The Grapes of Wrath in the red dirt country around Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and if you have ever driven through Sequoyah County, you understand exactly why. 🚜

Sallisaw is the county seat of Sequoyah County in far eastern Oklahoma, where the Ozark plateau meets the Arkansas River valley and the landscape feels lush and green compared to the western plains. It is historically the heart of Cherokee Nation territory, named for the salt works that operated along a nearby creek in the early 19th century.

But for many readers, Sallisaw is first and forever the starting point of the Joad family's westward flight in Steinbeck's 1939 masterpiece. The novel opens on drought-baked Oklahoma farmland, and it was the experience of real people from places like Sallisaw and the surrounding region who inspired the story. During the 1930s Dust Bowl and Depression, hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans loaded what they could carry onto trucks and headed west on Route 66, following the same road through Sequoyah County that Steinbeck would later immortalize.

The town of Sallisaw has history well beyond the novel: it sits near Sequoyah's cabin, the home of the Cherokee scholar who created the Cherokee syllabary, and it is the gateway to the Brushy Mountain country of eastern Oklahoma. But there is something about knowing that Steinbeck looked at this landscape and saw both its beauty and its heartbreak that makes the drive through here feel a little heavier, a little more significant.

When Wilma Mankiller became the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985, she was the first woman in modern histor...
10/01/2026

When Wilma Mankiller became the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985, she was the first woman in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. She would go on to be one of the greatest leaders in Oklahoma's history, full stop. 🌟

Born in 1945 at Mankiller Flats in Adair County, Wilma Mankiller grew up in poverty and spent part of her childhood in California after her family was relocated under a federal Indian Relocation Program. She returned to Oklahoma and dedicated her life to rebuilding communities. As deputy principal chief and then as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, she oversaw a renaissance: new health clinics, housing programs, job training, and a deep restoration of tribal governance and cultural pride.

Her leadership philosophy was simple and profound: trust communities to know what they need and then help them get it. Under her administration, the Cherokee Nation's government became a model studied by tribes and organizations around the world.

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. President Bill Clinton called her one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century. She died in 2010, but her legacy lives in every clinic, school, and community program that grew from what she built.

Oklahoma has produced remarkable leaders. Wilma Mankiller stands among the greatest of them. 🏔️

Long before any European set foot in what is now Oklahoma, Choctaw men were running full speed across open fields carryi...
10/01/2026

Long before any European set foot in what is now Oklahoma, Choctaw men were running full speed across open fields carrying hickory sticks in pursuit of a small leather ball, competing in a game that could involve hundreds of players at a time and last for days. 🏃

Ishtaboli, known to outsiders as Choctaw stickball, is one of the oldest indigenous games in North America. Players use two small sticks, each ending in a small rawhide basket, to carry, throw, and catch the ball without using their hands. The object is to strike a carved wooden pole at the center of the field or get the ball past the opposing team. Traditional matches had no formal boundaries, and the games sometimes took place across miles of countryside.

Stickball was more than sport. It was a form of diplomacy, a way to settle disputes between clans and communities without violence, and a training ground for the physical and mental discipline warriors needed. Games were preceded by ceremonies and followed by celebration. The night before a match, players observed strict preparations. The whole community was involved.

Today, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma still plays ishtaboli at cultural gatherings and festivals, teaching the game to younger generations as an act of cultural preservation and pride. To watch a match is to see something that has continued for centuries with barely a change.

Earl's Rib Palace on NE 23rd Street in Oklahoma City is the kind of place that only exists because someone decided to do...
10/01/2026

Earl's Rib Palace on NE 23rd Street in Oklahoma City is the kind of place that only exists because someone decided to do things right and never stopped. 🍖

For decades, Earl's has been a cornerstone of the Northeast OKC community. The ribs arrive smoky and tender, the kind that pull cleanly from the bone without any theater or technique required. The sides are exactly what sides should be: honest, well-seasoned, and not trying to impress anyone. The baked beans have depth. The cornbread does what cornbread is supposed to do. The experience is the meal, not just the food.

What makes a place like Earl's irreplaceable isn't just the barbecue, though the barbecue is serious. It's the fact that the restaurant has been woven into the fabric of its neighborhood, a spot where people celebrate, grieve, connect, and return to again and again because they know they'll be fed well and feel welcome. Northeast Oklahoma City has a rich food culture that doesn't always get the attention it deserves from broader culinary media, and Earl's is one of the anchors of that culture.

Whenever someone asks where to eat BBQ in Oklahoma City, the people who really know will point you northeast. 🔥

09/30/2026

On August 19, 1958, Clara Luper walked into the Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City with thirteen young members of the NAACP Youth Council. They sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. They were refused. They did not leave. What unfolded in that Oklahoma City store happened a full eighteen months before the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins that most Americans learn about in school as the beginning of the lunch counter desegregation movement. Oklahoma got there first, led by a woman who had been quietly building toward this moment for years. ✊

Clara Luper taught history at Dunjee High School in Spencer and organized tirelessly within the NAACP Youth Council. She had studied the philosophy of nonviolent resistance and prepared the young people in her council to face refusal and hostility without responding in kind. The training mattered. When Katz Drug Store refused to serve them, they stayed seated, returned the next day, and kept returning until the pressure could not be sustained. Katz Drug Store desegregated its lunch counters, and the victory rippled outward from that Oklahoma City counter in ways Luper had been working toward long before that August morning. 🍽️

Clara Luper spent decades advocating for civil rights across Oklahoma and was reportedly arrested more than two dozen times in connection with demonstrations she led and organized over the years. She passed away in 2011. A statue honoring her stands in Oklahoma City today, but the chapter of American civil rights history she helped write in 1958 still does not appear in most textbooks alongside Greensboro. Oklahoma was there first. Clara Luper led the way. 🌟

General Clarence Tinker did not live to see his name on an air base, but the state of Oklahoma made sure he was not forg...
09/30/2026

General Clarence Tinker did not live to see his name on an air base, but the state of Oklahoma made sure he was not forgotten. ✈️

Born in 1887 at the Osage Agency in what is now Osage County, Tinker grew up as a member of the Osage Nation and rose through the ranks of the U.S. Army Air Service to become the first Native American to achieve the rank of Major General. He was a decorated pilot, a skilled administrator, and a leader who earned the respect of everyone who served under him.

On June 7, 1942, just six months after Pearl Harbor, General Tinker personally led a long-range bombing mission against the Japanese fleet retreating from the Battle of Midway. The mission was a long shot given the distances involved and the aircraft available. His plane was lost over the ocean. He was 54 years old, and he was the highest-ranking American officer killed in action during the Pacific campaign up to that point.

Shortly after his death, the Army Air Forces renamed its major maintenance and logistics facility in Midwest City, Oklahoma, Tinker Air Force Base, in his honor. It became one of the largest military installations in the country.

Every flight that has ever departed Tinker bears his name, and that name carries the full weight of his sacrifice. 🎖️

Before GPS, before mile markers, before road signs, travelers crossing Oklahoma knew they were on the right path when th...
09/30/2026

Before GPS, before mile markers, before road signs, travelers crossing Oklahoma knew they were on the right path when they spotted Rock Mary rising from the flat Caddo County prairie. 🗺️

Rock Mary is a volcanic butte in Caddo County, a remnant plug of ancient basalt from the same geological event that created the Wichita Mountains to the southwest. It stands alone on the prairie, suddenly and dramatically, rising perhaps a hundred feet above the surrounding flat terrain in a region where most things you can see for miles are grasses and red dirt.

For mid-19th century wagon trains moving through what would become Oklahoma on their way to California and New Mexico, Rock Mary was a celebrated landmark. Emigrants along the Southern Overland Trail and California Road logged it in their journals with relief, because it meant they had successfully navigated the most difficult river crossings behind them. Some historians believe the name comes from a traveler who named it for a companion named Mary who died nearby on the trail. The exact story is lost, but the name stuck.

Today, Rock Mary stands near Interstate 40 in Caddo County, visible from the highway and still startlingly dramatic against the surrounding terrain. It is easy to understand why generations of travelers used it to find their bearings.

Henry Starr robbed more banks than Jesse James and Billy the Kid combined, and he did it on horseback and in automobiles...
09/30/2026

Henry Starr robbed more banks than Jesse James and Billy the Kid combined, and he did it on horseback and in automobiles, making him one of the few outlaws in American history to span both eras. 🤠

Born into the Cherokee Nation in 1873, Starr was reportedly a nephew by marriage of Belle Starr, though he resented the comparison. He started his outlaw career in the 1890s robbing stores and trains in Indian Territory, and his reputation grew from there. His most audacious act came on March 27, 1915, in Stroud, Oklahoma, when he and his gang attempted to rob two banks simultaneously. He succeeded at both, walking away with cash from the Stroud National Bank and the First National Bank in a single morning. It is believed to be the last double bank robbery by horseback in American history. A teenage boy shot him in the leg as he tried to escape.

Starr served prison time multiple times, was pardoned multiple times, and between sentences actually starred in a silent film about his own life. He returned to bank robbery anyway. He was shot and killed in February 1921 while robbing a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. He was 47 years old.

In a territory full of outlaws, Henry Starr stands out for sheer audacity and improbable longevity.

Blake Griffin put on a University of Oklahoma jersey and reminded the entire country what Oklahoma basketball can produc...
09/30/2026

Blake Griffin put on a University of Oklahoma jersey and reminded the entire country what Oklahoma basketball can produce. 🏀

Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Griffin attended West Moore High School before becoming a two-time Big 12 Player of the Year at OU. His sophomore season in 2008-09 was one of the most dominant individual seasons in college basketball history: 22.7 points and 14.4 rebounds per game, a unanimous National Player of the Year selection, and a performance so complete that he was the consensus No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft.

He went to the Los Angeles Clippers and won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in his first season, then proceeded to make six All-Star teams over the next decade. His dunks were so spectacular that an entire highlight reel era was built around him. He was one of the most electric forwards of his generation.

But for Oklahomans, the Blake Griffin story starts long before the NBA, in gyms across the metro, at OU's Lloyd Noble Center on winter nights when the Sooners needed him to carry them. Oklahoma has a history of producing exceptional basketball talent, and Griffin is at the top of that list.

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