The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

McMASTER'S OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE (1889–1900).

Devoted to Oklahoma and the Indian Territories, Oklahoma Magazine made its home in Oklahoma City. The publication was one of the first territorial magazines to abandon strictly religious or settlement-promoting articles for a multipurpose format. After eight years in print, the magazine became known by a more familiar title, McMaster's Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly of Oklahoma and Indian Territory.

After several treks to the Oklahoma Territory beginning in 1882, Frank McMaster, lawyer, editor, and Oklahoma Eighty-niner, brought his printing materials from Chicago to Oklahoma City in 1889 and began publishing The Gazette, a regular newspaper. From his address at 19 Grand Avenue, he also began publishing the Oklahoma Magazine, a sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, (sometimes not published at all) magazine that set the tone for publications to follow in its wake. McMaster's Magazine (1889–98) preceded its rivals, Twin Territories (1898–1904) and Sturm's Statehood Magazine (1905–11), although, with some exceptions, all three used similar content design. Each McMaster's issue contained approximately sixty, six-by-nine-inch pages of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, with photos and illustrations liberally interspersed. Recognized by his contemporaries and modern readers alike for its concise and timely reporting, the nineteenth-century McMaster's Magazine is of historical significance. The narrative accounts chronicle people and events, providing a decade's worth of authoritative resources for historical researchers and for those simply curious about formative Oklahoma.

Suzzanne Kelley