Tulsa was a Creek settlement first, then a cowtown, and then a boomtown. By the end of the 1920s we had become a mature city with an established culture and character that still describes much of who we are.

All of these changes happened quickly. Lots of people from lots of places, creating a new culture, a “Tulsa” culture that was distinctly defining of our own city.

By the late 1930s we were recognized as the Oil Capital of the World, and by the 1950s we began the slow process of transitioning to greater economic diversity. Oil finds in other parts of the country were eclipsing Oklahoma’s role in the industry, and by the 1970s we were clearly entering the modern era of our city’s history: we were settling into a new role, but one still not yet fully defined.

Tulsa was changing during these years, but other American cities were changing too. Throughout the country, the automobile was transforming the landscape of cities. The old patterns of how people lived were being replaced by new ones, impacting the nature of community and altering how people related to each other in the new urban geography of car-based living.

This study is about transformation in Tulsa and how, after decades of changes, we have become the place we are now. Why have we come to be so different from the city we once were? What was the role of the automobile in causing this change? What other factors contributed? These are the questions we will consider in the course of this study.

The method we will follow is simple. Dividing the project into three sections of past, present, and future, we will gather articles that provide observations, facts, and bits of history about Tulsa. You can think of it as a “city tour” that explores Tulsa’s origins, examines current trends, and projects future possibilities.

All of the articles that make up the study are linked on our Past, Present, and Future pages. Links to these pages are near the top of the left hand column of this page.

This study in narrowly focused on the impacts on Tulsa of technology, especially the automobile, in altering the nature and geography of community in our city. The pervasive and transformative consequences of these impacts, however, have a significance that merits deeper study …a study to which we are contributing through the work of this project.