Why So Few Americans Live In Oklahoma As Compared To Texas

As a Oklahoman, I enjoyed you video about our state. A small correction concerning your reference to the "Oklahoma River". The actual river is the North Canadian river. The Oklahoma River is just a 7 mile section of the North Canadian that runs through the center of Oklahoman City and has only existed since 2004. You also gave me a chuckle concerning your pronunciation of Osage and Ouachita. Osage is Oh sage like the plant. Ouachita is pronounced Waa shee taw. (You also mispelled Ouachita.) It's okay, it takes a lot of Oklahomas a life time to properly pronounce a lot of the Native American influenced words you find throughout the state.

Oklahoma lost a lot of its population during the Dust Bowl. I'm surprised you didn't mention that.

My great great grandfather came to Oklahoma on the Chickasaw Trail of Tears. I grew up in the D/FW area. Went to Oklahoma after I got out of the service. Got connected to my Chickasaw culture and raised a family with my wife. The slow pace of life agrees with me. I love it here. I love being involved with my tribe. It’s a great place to live if you have simple tastes and like a slow pace to your life.

In the 60s my brother worked in NYC and was asked about his state of origin - Oklahoma. He told his friend that the state had just got electricity the year before (as a joke) - and the guy believed him! Next year we were going to get indoor plumbing.

All of the major oil companies were headquartered in Tulsa and nearby cities until the oil embargo in the 70s. In fact, Phillips Petroleum is the reason Bartlesville has an impressive skyline for its size.

Odd fact: Oklahoma is slightly bigger and more populous than the entire country of Uruguay.

I’m not native to Oklahoma but have recently called it home. Its geography is actually amazing when you consider all the variety of environments we have here! There’s the alabaster caverns with deposits of some of the rarest gypsum in the world! There’s sand dunes, the majestic witchita and quartz mountians and so much more!! That being said we do also have terrible infrastructure, parks n rec scandals/underfunding, and one of the worst superfund sites in picher!

I really was surprised when I get to know Oklahoma has 4M population. It’s as populous as Oregon or Louisiana. To be fair, it’s still a fair amount of population for interior of the US , compared to the west coast Oregon or gulf coast Louisiana.

I live in Oklahoma and the last statement is true. Families don’t really leave Oklahoma and it’s almost a tight knit community. Every family has history of Indians and even my kids are registered Cherokee. Such an interesting state and glad to be here. Tulsa!

"but for most Oklahomans that's perfectly OK... Most people who live there are perfectly happier having fewer people nearby and a slower pace to life." That is well said! Very cool video :)

Thanks for highlighting my home state in your vid. Most folks outside Oklahoma have no idea how diverse our geography is. We have a little bit of everything and it makes life fun and interesting. We as Oklahomans have a million day trips we can take before we get bored inside our state.

You may have cared to mention that there was a significant amount of immigration from Oklahoma during the 30's dust bowl era and WW2 in the 40's when the population decreased by over 60,000 or 8%.

Phillips 66, Conoco, Haliburton, and Kerr McGee were all headquartered and developed in Oklahoma. Over the past 25 years, they one by one all moved to Houston, mostly because of no state income taxes but also for other reasons. People want to cram into one place for some reason. I do not feel that Dallas and Houston are good places to live any longer. The quality of life is lacking. Too many sheep following the herd.

I’d like to add one correction to this video: Although its headquarters may be in Houston today, Phillips 66 was originally headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which is located about 40 miles or so north of Tulsa. I’ve been to Bartlesville many times, since my mom lives there (it’s actually her hometown), and I’ve seen the house that the Phillips family lived in. A lot of history connected with Phillips 66 can be found in Bartlesville.

I feel like you forgot a very imported small town. Cushing has the largest oil tank farm in the world that's why they call it "Pipeline Crossroad of the World"

When you mentioned The Port Facilities at Houston, I really thought you would mention The Port of Catoosa, the most inland Port with connections to the Sea in America. Nothing like Houston but so many are surprised as it's a little known fact.

The thing is, a lot of grads who graduate from OU / OSU find that all the jobs are in Dallas. It’s the reason you see so many Oklahomans have to move to Texas.

Correction: at 0:22, he says that the single city of Dallas has 7.6 million people. The city proper only has a population of 1.3 million people and the 7.6 million population is the entire DFW metroplex area.

As a Oklahoman, I can confirm we did the best job to keep people out of our state :)

I believe you missed a very important factor to the lack of population in Oklahoma, being the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Over 440,000 people migrated out of Oklahoma during this time due to the weather. The dust bowl was a natural and manmade event. Abnormally die (natural) which over farming/over tilling (manmade) destroying the natural grass lands leaving a desert, more or less. Another huge drop happened in the mid 1980s during the "oil glut". Both events could be responsible for 2-4 million people today with birth rates alone (At these times). So, if these events didn't happen Oklahoma's population could now potentially be 6-8 million people.