Early Visitors to Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s First Visitors is a collection of writings of pre-statehood visitors. Long before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, its rivers, mountains, plains, wildlife, and inhabitants were intricately described by explorers, scientists, military expedition leaders, teachers, newspaper reporters, and missionaries. These visitors recorded their observations of the land and its people in journals, reports, diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, and books.

Modern Oklahomans are indeed fortunate that our early visitors wisely memorialized their impressions of the raw frontier. Without these writings of pre-statehood travel, we would be left only to imagine life in Oklahoma in the century before statehood.

by William D. Welge and Bob Burke