Timeline of Transportation in Oklahoma
Prehistory - Humans were living in what became Oklahoma 15,000 years ago. Oklahoma was a maze of Indian trails and frontier trails long before the road-building era began. Native people for transportation had also used the waterways for millenia.
800-1450 - Caddoan speaking people were part of a trade network that extended from the Rocky Mountains to the Virginia coast to the Gulf coast of Florida to the Great Lakes.
1740s - French trappers used the Arkansas and Canadian rivers to transport beaver, otter, mink, muskrat, and buffalo hides.
1750s - At high water, the Wichita people shipped salt, corn, furs, hides, and slaves down the Red River to New Orleans from Twin Villages in present day Jefferson County.
1803 - The United States purchases the Louisana Territory from France. This results in an increase in the number of American trappers active in present-day Oklahoma.
1811 - Oklahoma's Great Salt Plains are discovered by George Sibley, an Indian agent. He recommends building a road there for salt shipments.
1820 - Cargoes on the Arkansas River now include grain, salt, bacon, lead, beeswax, leather and pecans.
1821 - The first keelboat is brought to Oklahoma. Keelboats were almost unsinkable and could carry between ten and twenty tons of cargo and/or passengers and cover an average of fifteen miles a day upstream.
1824 - Fort Gibson is built. This stimulates trade, transporation, and migration into the area.
1825 - The first road is built. It goes fifty-eight miles from Fort Smith to Fort Gibson.
1827 - A road from Fort Gibson to Fort Towson is built. Also a road known as the Santa Fe Trail is built that crosses the panhandle in present-day Cimarron County. This was a route from western Missouri to Santa Fe. Every year until 1880, long lines of canvas-covered freight wagons pulled by straining spans of oxen, mules, or horses, moved over Kansas and Oklahoma on the rutted Santa Fe Train, bound for the frontier towns on the Rio Grande.
1828 - A steamboat going to Fort Gibson comes into Oklahoma for the first time. It goes upstream almost as easily as it goes downstream, and it can tow keelboats behind it.
1832 - A road is built through the Kiamichi wilderness from Fort Smith to Fort Towson.
1838 - After eight years of work, the Great Raft is removed. The Great Raft was a logjam that had made travel on the Red River impossible.
1845 - By 1845, eastern and central Oklahoma were laced with a grid work of roads, traces, and trails linking the towns, military posts, missions, and schools situated in the domains of the Five Civilized Tribes.
1849 - The California road, an east-west road that followed the course of the Canadian River, was built to accommodate travelers headed for the California gold fields.
1858 - The Butterfield Overland Mail began service from Fort Smith to Colbert's Ferry, the place where the Texas Road crosses the Red River into Texas.
1850-1860 - Texas' population triples. Many of the immigrants to Texas use the Texas Road. Actually this is a road or trail that had been used into antiquity and had other names as well. The road ran from the northeast corner of Oklahoma to the Red River. Today U.S. Highway 69 follows this ancient path.
1870 - The first railroad is built in Oklahoma. On June 6th, the Missouri, Kansas, Texas railroad, the KATY, crossed from Kansas into Oklahoma and laid tracks to Vinita in the Cherokee Nation.
1871 - The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, the A&P, laid rails from Van Buren, Arkansas, to Vinita.
1887 - The Saint Louis and San Francisco, the Frisco railroad, built tracks from Fort Smith across the Choctaw Nation to Paris, Texas. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, the Santa Fe railroad, built from Arkansas, Kansas, to Purcell in the Potawatomi/Shawnee Nation.
1888 - The Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railroad built from the Arkansas/Oklahoma border to Wagoner in the Cherokee Nation, then north to the Kansas border.
1889-1892 - The Rock Island Railroad built from the Kansas border to the Red River.
1887-1894 - The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad built from the Arkansas/Oklahoma border to McAlester then to El Reno and west to Amarillo.
1903 - The Oklahoma Railway Company begins electric streetcar service in Oklahoma City.
1906 - The Tulsa Street Railway Company begins trolley service in Tulsa.
1907 - By statehood more than 6,000 miles of track served Oklahoma. The new state government adopts Jim Crow Laws. Those laws stated that public transportation facilities for whites and blacks were to be separate.
1917 - The first airfield is opened in Tulsa.
1927 - Cyrus Avery of Tulsa became the "Father of Route 66," the highway from Chicago to Los Angeles and one of the most famous highways in the United States. Route 66 passes through Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and other Oklahoma towns.
1932 - The "Little New Deal" proposed by Governor Marland resulted in expanded road construction.
1940s - In response to World War II, Will Rogers Air Field in Oklahoma City, Cimmaron Air Field near Yukon, and Tinker Air Field in Midwest City were built.
1947 - The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority is created. In the years to come, this agency would build toll roads that would serve most of Oklahoma.
1953 - The Turner Turnpike, the first toll road in Oklahoma, is opened. This turnpike connects Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
1954 - The Will Rogers Turnpike opens. It connects Tulsa and Joplin, Missouri.
1956 - Congress passes the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which created the Interstate and Defense Highways. 800 miles of Interstate highways were to be in Oklahoma. The north-south road was to be I-35, and the east-west road was to be I-40. I-44 would include the Turner and Will Rogers turnpikes.
1970 - The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System is completed. 144 miles of this system are in Oklahoma. Millions of tons of cargo are shipped up and down the system each year.
1978 - General Motors begins manufacturing cars in Oklahoma in the largest plant ever built for GM.
1999 - The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority is created by the state government. Its purpose is to encourage aerospace industry development in Oklahoma.
2004 - Guthrie's Spirit Wing Aviation Company is chosen to modify existing aircraft for space travel.
2005 - Burns Flat, Oklahoma, is the location of a proposed spaceport from which the Rocketplace XP aircraft will take off and land. Space tourists will be able to buy an excursion into space. Burns Flat has the fourth longest runway in the United States.
2008 - MG Motors North America will assemble MG TF Coupes at a factory to be built in Ardmore.
Information provided by Walter Eskridge, Curator of Education