Meet the legendary Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, courageous Spanish explorer and trailblazer of the 16th Century. His historic impact on Oklahoma continues even today, not least in our vibrant and growing Hispanic population.

Ride with John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert on Coronado’s epic trail across modern day Oklahoma and the Southwest. This is the 103rd episode of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

“Coronado’s Expedition Through Northwest Oklahoma,” by G. N. Taylor. Coronado’s expedition of conquistadors included several hundred Indians and a captured Native guide called “The Turk.” The ever-present Catholic priest accompanies Coronado in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. (www.gntayloroklaart.com)

Already respected and well known at 27 years of age when he launched his fabled trek across Mexico and the American Southwest, the peerless Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (1510-1554) introduced modern-day Oklahoma and Western civilization to one another a century before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Famed artist of the American West Frederic Remington’s Coronado Sets Out to the North, portraying the journey that compassed present-day Oklahoma.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

Our epic, 3-part series chronicles Oklahoma’s colossal role, on the battlefield and on the home front, in history’s greatest conflict—World War II. Some of the greatest Patriot warriors in American history left Oklahoma to defend their country against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, many at the cost of their life.

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and be astounded at how little you know of lionhearted Oklahomans’ leadership on land, air, and sea in this titanic odyssey. These are the 97th, 98th, and 99th episodes of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Forty-fifth Infantry Brigade Combat Team “Thunderbirds,” comprised largely of Oklahomans, bow for prayer led by 1st Lt. and Chaplain Harvey Floyd Bell before eating dinner on Christmas Day 1943, near the Italian front. Photo Harvey Floyd Bell, 163rd Signal Photo Com- pany. Colorization Jakob Lagerweij. (@colourisedpieceofjake) Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration..

Oklahoma artist R. T. Foster’s Siege of Battleship Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor depicts the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Ameri­can Army, Army Air Corps, and Naval installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Courtesy Foster and the Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation Fund, Inc.

This powerful, full-page John A. Brown newspaper ad ran in the Daily Oklaho­man the day before the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Phillips 66 signs, familiar to drivers across America, both modeled after the Route 66 signs that marked the heart of “Phillips Country” and near which the famous road test of a potent early Phillips gasoline occurred. The orange and black sign sprouted up in 1930, the modern red and white one in 1959. Former President Dwight Eisenhower’s painting of his good friend, innovative Phillips Chairman Kenneth S. “Boots” Adams. Crucial Phillips trailblazing research and product development of both synthetic rubber and high-octane aviation fuel helped Ike and his American and Allied armies win World War II. Courtesy Steve Adams.

“Angels of the Airfields” is what American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines called First Lieu­tenant Erneze Pope and her military colleagues on nurses’ evacuation units. They risked their lives to escort wounded warriors from the worst World War II battlefields to forward operating hospitals. Left to right with Pope are Virginia Lowe of Wesley Hospital in OKC, Maxine Metzger of an Enid hospital, Beatrice Hardwick of OKC’s St. Anthony Hospital, and Kedrann Wood of Oklaho­ma City General. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society. According to one military historian, “Flight nurses served as the military equivalent of Dante’s Beatrice, (who) in the allegorical poem The Divine Comedy, is a symbol of hope who guides the author/protagonist through purgatory and hell to heaven.”

Oklahoma’s Ruben Rivers, the real “Black Panther,” whose legendary feats against the Nazis were the first to ever garner a black American the Medal of Honor.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

Find out why legendary historian Bob Blackburn calls President Thomas Jefferson’s historic Louisiana Purchase the most important event in OKLAHOMA History. Great event, great country, GREAT man.

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and learn how the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and helped lead our fight for independence also cut the greatest real estate deal in history—while going head to head against none other than Napoleon Bonaparte! This is the 102nd episode of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Oklahoma Historical Society Executive Director Bob Blackburn, the dean of 21st-century Oklahoma historians, rated President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase as the most important event in Oklahoma history. He cited how the act annexed into the United States all the land of present-day Oklahoma except the Panhandle, and that Jefferson intended a portion of the land to provide a colonization area for American Indian tribes.

The Louisiana Territory Purchase (red) from Napoleonic France doubled the land size of the existing United States (green).

Celebrated Oklahoma artist Mike Wimmer’s Ceremonial Transfer of the Louisiana Purchase in New Orleans – 1803 depicts the signing of the document transferring the Louisiana Territory and ceremoniously passing the keys of the city from the French to the Americans. On December 20, 1803, French representative Pierre Clément de Laussat (center of the table) met with (to his left) James Wilkinson, commanding general of the United States Army, and (to his left) William Claiborne, former governor of the Mississippi Territory, in the Sala Capitular (Capitol Room) at the Cabildo in New Orleans.

French politician François Barbé-Marbois, American Founding Father Robert Livingston, and Secretary of State and future President James Monroe sign the Louisiana Purchase, transferring the ownership of present-day Oklahoma from France to America.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

Think the pioneer spirit, the daring determination in the 19th and early 20th centuries to craft a better future in Oklahoma for our children, is dead? “Tulsa Time!” begs to differ!

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and hear how the people of Tulsa decided to turn decline and dejection into advance, opportunity, and a 21st-century boom. This is the 104th episode of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Former Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor, who helped lead the city’s great 21st-Century renaissance, helps deliver the Tulsa Drillers’ home plate from its previous home to the professional baseball team’s new ONEOK Field in 2010.

Tulsa’s iconic “BOK,” the crown jewel of its Vision 2025.

Tulsa oilman George Kaiser’s grand vision, the world-famed, 100-acre Gathering Place, just south of the downtown district. Indeed, Tulsa’s pulsating center had become much more than “just” the mighty BOK.

A promotional image for Tulsa’s historic Vision 2025 initiative.

Prominent Tulsa oilman Rob Berry.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

Quanah Parker, Chief of the Comanches, the mightiest warrior tribe ever to ride. American soldier Ranald Slidell MacKenzie, perhaps the only man the greatest Plains tribes, north and south, feared. Their epic duel—and what came after—is one of Oklahoma’s and America’s greatest sagas. It took us two podcasts, and both of their stories, to tell it.

Saddle up with John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert, ride the thundering Plains of old Oklahoma and Texas with our greatest horse soldiers, and meet “The West’s Two Greatest Warriors.” These are the 95th and 96th episodes of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

The momentous hour of confrontation in downtown Oklahoma City, Black Friday, October 31, 1969. Armed state troopers and police quietly ring 1,500 protestors at City Hall to ensure the peace. Photo Jim Argo. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Journey with John back to “Black Friday,” the breathtaking confrontation on Halloween Day 1969 in downtown OKC over the historic Sanitation Workers Strike. This double header podcast peels back the curtain on the day that could have seen one of Oklahoma’s greatest tragedies, but wound up witnessing one of its greatest feats of selfless heroism.

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and relive “Black Friday.” These are the 91st and 92nd episodes of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Legendary Oklahoma cartoonist Jim Lange humorously depicted how as the 1969 Oklahoma City sanitation strike wore on, the experience on the “home front” with reduced garbage pickup service grew increasingly “offensive.” Courtesy Oklahoma Publish­ing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

High school teacher, NAACP Youth leader, and 1969 OKC sanita­tion strike spokesperson Clara Luper, jailed along with 35 others after sitting down in front of a truck attempting to leave for its garbage pickup route. Photo Associated Press. Courtesy Oklaho­ma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

A dramatic private encounter between Black Muslim leader Theodore G. X. (left) and longtime community leader Frank Cox held dramatic implications for the of history of Oklahoma City. Photos Don Tullous, Joe Miller. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Bible in one hand, megaphone in the other, Pastor W. K. Jackson speaks “apples of gold in settings of silver” on Black Friday 1969 and helps deliver Oklahoma City from disaster. Photo Jim Argo. Courtesy Oklahoma Publish­ing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Oklahoma City sanitation strike hero Stanton K. Young and his daughter. Of Young’s many contributions to Oklahoma through his long and accomplished life, crafting a Solomonic, 11th-hour settlement of that contentious event with Rev. W. K. Jackson endures among the greatest. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

Charles Colcord in later years as one of Oklahoma’s preeminent civic and business leaders “Chuck Colcord, Scourge of the Cattle Rustlers,” the front cover title of an Old West magazine story chronicling the exploits of lawman Charles “Chuck” Colcord. The veracity of the particular exploits portrayed in the magazine is uncertain, but that of Colcord’s deeds inspiring them is not.

Old West lawman, pioneer, rider in three land runs, cattle baron, wildcatter, founding father of OKC, builder of skyscrapers (including the Colcord Building), and giant of early Oklahoma—with Chalres Colcord, for once, the legend really WAS fact.

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and meet the “Guardian of Early Oklahoma.” This is the 93rd episode of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

“Chuck Colcord, Scourge of the Cattle Rustlers,” the front cover title of an Old West magazine story chronicling the exploits of lawman Charles “Chuck” Colcord. The veracity of the particular exploits portrayed in the magazine is uncertain, but that of Colcord’s deeds inspiring them is not.

Charles Colcord was Oklahoma City’s first police chief, its first sheriff, and a deputy U. S. marshal in Oklahoma Territory. Here, in August 1890, he sits with the other officers of OKC’s first police department. Courtesy Edna M. Couch Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society.

Bill Tilghman and Charles Colcord, two of the Old West’s most famous lawmen, served together as deputy marshals in the Cherokee Outlet during the gigantic 1893 Land Run. They also took on some of the most dangerous outlaws in American history.

Charles Colcord built his Heritage Hills mansion in 1903, four years before Oklahoma statehood. Standing at 421 N.W. 13th Street in Oklahoma City, it was a replica of his father’s antebellum plantation home in Kentucky and symbolized the accomplishments of a people who had raised up a booming American capital city from the barren prairie in just over a decade. The foolish 1960s demolition of the home in order to replace it with a commercial building helped trigger the great OKC preservation movement. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.

When completed in 1910, the Colcord Building stood 12 stories tall. It was Oklahoma City’s first skyscraper and the tallest building in the state. Ever the practical visionary, Colcord commissioned renowned architect William Wells to design the structure with reinforced concrete to avoid destruction like that wreaked by the recent San Francisco earthquake and fires. He also lavished the building with marble, nickel, and bronze. More than a century after its opening, the Colcord Building remains a vibrant hub of a resurgent downtown OKC.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

The Oklahoma State Supreme Court may not have considered a Ten Commandments memorial welcome at the state capitol, but the Choctaw Tribal Council built their own and unveiled it in the form of a magnificent granite monument during opening ceremonies at the 2017 Choctaw Nation Trail of Tears Walk and Heritage Day. One side of the “open Bible” display Moses’s commandments in English, the other in Choctaw. From left, Chief Gary Batton, Assistant Chief Jack Austin Jr. and members of the Choctaw Tribal Council unveil the monument on the Historic Choctaw Capitol Grounds at Tvshka Homma (Tuskahoma). Had it not been for the courageous efforts of Bill Carmack, Fred and LaDonna Harris, and other Oklahomans, and the rejection by Choctaw leaders of tempting, personal government payoffs, this scene could never have occurred, because no organized Choctaw tribe would have existed. Courtesy Choctaw Nation.

OU Professor Bill Carmack and his Oklahoma colleagues LED the effort to save our tribes from elimination and launch them on their historic, long overdue path toward a second chance. Bet you’ve never heard that before, other than in our OKLAHOMANS 2 book. You can now, in our new, double-episode podcast.

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert and learn the enthralling story of how Oklahomans engineered the historic making good of many of America’s promises to our Natives. These are both the 80th and 81st episodes of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program. Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History.

Lawton native and University of Oklahoma professor Bill Carmack is sworn in as Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington in 1966. Standing nearby are his friends, Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris and his wife, Comanche activist LaDonna Harris. Courtesy William R. Carmack.

LaDonna Vita Tabbytite Harris, raised on a farm near Walters, is one of the most accomplished Native social and political activists in American history. She played key roles first in aiding the plight of Indians in western Oklahoma, then in the great march from near-tribal termination to 21st-century sovereignty and prominence. Photo Paul Southerland. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Two controversial American Presidents from opposing political parties, Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon, left lasting legacies for advancing the cause of the Indigenous peoples of Oklahoma and America.

Dr. Bill Carmack, the Lawton native and OU Regents Professor Emeritus of Communications, still strong and vigorous at 90, in the 2020s.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.

President John F. Kennedy and his good friend, OU football coach Bud Wilkinson (Ch. 8), in the White House. JFK decried what he called a nation full of “Soft Americans” becoming sports spectators rather than participants, and selected Bud to head a new President’s Council on Physical Fitness. Kennedy played football himself at Harvard and was a college gridiron fanatic. He not infrequently called the Sooner to Washington to discuss their fitness program in person. Bud remembered that the President invariably moved to the most important item on his agenda: asking the Coach for his personal recollections of big games! Kennedy’s last words to him: “I think you can win them all this year.” Only a couple of months later, JFK died. The next day, Bud, his head bowed to the ground all day on the sideline, coached his final college football game. Courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Presidential Museum.

He wasn’t from Oklahoma and he never lived here, but he had historic collaborations with several of the state’s greatest leaders, and his impact on the Sooner State was colossal—and not yet finished. Learn the true legacy of “JFK – An American Patriot.”

Join John and KTOK/iHeartRadio star Gwin Faulconer-Lippert for one of American history’s most haunting tales, like you’ve never before heard it—the life and death of a decorated World War II hero and President whose legend grows with each passing year.

This is the 79th episode of our original OKLAHOMA GOLD! radio program! Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible! Go HERE to listen to them all! Future episodes explore more great heroes, events, and movements of Oklahoma History. Thank you Atwoods Stores for making it possible!

JFK visiting the southeast Oklahoma ranch of legendary Oklahoma oilman, governor, and U.S. senator Robert S. Kerr, with whom he had a complex but consequential and mutually respectful working relationship.

Though his powerful father arranged a desk job for him during World War II, John F. Kennedy enlisted in the Navy. He rose to command of PT-109, a lethal fast attack craft that the Japanese called “devil boats.” Kennedy’s legend began to grow when an enemy destroyer tore his boat in half in a Solomon Islands night battle. Some crewmen died and Kennedy led the survivors to the closest island. He saved his bloodied engineer by swimming for four hours, gripping a strap from the man’s life preserver in his teeth to tug his body. He nearly died in swimming and canoeing attempts into the sea for help before rescue came. Decorated for his exploits, Kennedy suffered from the effects of his wounds for the rest of his life.

With a fist clenched in conviction, President John F. Kennedy rallies a dejected nation reeling and fearful from Communist space successes: “We have vowed that we shall not see (space) governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace.”

Never before or since has the world come closer to nuclear destruction than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Battle-hardened World War II veterans led both major adversaries, the United States and Communist Russia. The latter’s leader, Nikita Khrushchev, a Soviet commander at the Battle of Stalingrad, gambled that youthful American President John Kennedy would not risk nuclear war to stop Russian missile deployment and rearming. The Communist’s gamble failed—barely. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co. and Oklahoma Historical Society.

Illustration Jim Lange. Courtesy Oklahoma Publishing Co.

Many thanks to Atwoods Stores, a farm and ranch supply company based in Enid, Oklahoma, for their support of the Red River Institute of History and OKLAHOMA GOLD! Please support them as you are able! Wherever you are, you can order online from thousands of quality products on their terrific website HERE. Atwoods also has 66 stores in 5 states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition to farm and ranch supplies, Atwoods stores sell clothing, lawn and garden items, tools, hardware, automotive supplies, sporting goods, pet supplies, firearms, and seasonal items.