Oklahoma Almost Became Two Different States

Oklahoma has one of the strangest and uniquely identifiable shapes in the U.S.A.

Understandably, the majority of us likely don't think much about it. We grew up looking at maps in school. Oklahoma looks like Oklahoma. It's just normal, end of discussion.

But every now and then I'll be staring at a map and find myself wondering what exactly happened with that Panhandle.

Now, before you skip straight to the comments, I do know the history of how our panhandle happened... but there's a lot more to the story of Oklahoma than Texas not being able to be its own country.

Here's the weird part hardly anyone knows... Oklahoma almost didn't look like Oklahoma.

Fun Fact

A huge chunk of eastern Oklahoma wasn't supposed to be part of Oklahoma at all. It was supposed to be a completely different state.

They originally proposed it as a separate state called Sequoyah.

Now, before you start imagining some forgotten ghost town that never got off the ground, Sequoyah was a shockingly serious statehood proposal. Nobody was kicking ideas around over coffee, this went through Congress.

Leaders in Indian Territory held a constitutional convention, and they drew county maps. They established boundaries. They worked out how the government would function. They basically built an entire state on paper and handed it to Washington DC.

And honestly, if you look at a map of what Sequoyah would've been, it makes sense.

Back then, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were two vastly different places.

Different governments.

Different histories.

Different populations.

Different climates.

Different everything.

Combining the two territories into a single state wasn't the first or obvious choice.

That's the surprising part most people never learned. Even if you grew up here in Oklahoma and took the mandatory Oklahoma history classes, this is probably still news to you, and it's crazy to think about today.

Can you imagine that Tulsa, Broken Bow, and most of eastern Oklahoma could realistically be in another state? I mean, we'd totally vote to oust Muskogee and McAlester these days for the sake of improving our crime rates... but had Sequoyah actually happened, Oklahoma may not have even become an oil and gas state. That was all born in NEOK.

The state line would be somewhere west of Stillwater. Bedlam would've been an interstate rivalry. Maybe we'd all spend football season making fun of Sequoyah instead of Texas. Half the arguments on Oklahoma social media would need a passport.

Okay, maybe not a passport, but you get the point.

The crazy thing is Sequoyah didn't die because nobody wanted it, as is the case of our famous Panhandle... Washington simply wasn't interested in admitting two new states when one would do the trick.

So the federal government took Oklahoma Territory, took Indian Territory, smashed them together, and Oklahoma was born in 1907.

It's one of the very few examples of Washington DC being efficient.

What a rabbit hole, right?

Imagine if it had gone the other way. We might be having a completely different conversation today about combining our two states into something new again... but since Sequoyah and Oklahoma would have already been taken, we'd have to find a new name.

Okoyah? Sequokla? Tulsahoma?

We'll never know.