Commerce in Oklahoma

The Indigenous people of the land that would become Oklahoma engaged in the production of market goods and the trade of those goods. Commerce has always been an activity of the people living here, but the shape of that production, the type of trade, and with whom the people traded has changed dramatically. From intertribal trade within a continental-sized network to trade with international partners for the state’s primary commodities—oil and agricultural products—the land that is now Oklahoma has always been connected to the rest of the world. Oklahoma was, and is, a crossroads of commerce.

The Trade Bulletin of Oklahoma and Indian Territory was a commerce-focused publication from 1906, advertised as “devoted to the building and industrial interests of the Twin Territories.’

Altus Chamber of Commerce, 1947 (1989.161.105, W. C. Austin Project, Museum of the Western Prairie, Oklahoma Historical Society).

Boley’s Farmers & Merchants Bank (3377.1B.1, Oklahoma Historical Society Photograph Collection, OHS).

• Commerce in Oklahoma
  • Trade and the Columbian Exchange
  • Commerce in Indian Territory
  • The Civil War and the Cattle Industry
  • The Settler Economy and Statehood
  • The Great Depression
  • World War II
  • Diversification
  • The Growth of the Service Economy
  • Oklahoma Goes Global
  • Oklahoma at the Turn of the Century
  • Glossary
  • Activities
  • Bibliography