1909 Love / Woodward-Tiernan Railroad Map of Oklahoma w/ Oil Wells and Pipelines

This is a 1909 Woodward and Tiernan large-format folding railroad map of the State of Oklahoma at the peak of the Tulsa Oil Boom and just two years after Oklahoma became the 46th state. This was the era of Tulsa's 'Black Wall Street,' an unprecedented explosion of oil-driven African-American wealth centered around Tulsa. The map provides granular detail of the state's rail and oil infrastructure during this heady period.

A Closer Look

The state of Oklahoma is displayed with county lines, cities, and towns indicated. A complex network of 13 color-coded rail lines crisscross the state. These include national railroad lines like the 'Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad' and the 'Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad' to local operations like the 7.8-mile 'Poteau Valley Railroad'. Rail stations of several classes are noted throughout, with distances between stations recorded in black and between major stations or interchanges (principal points) noted in red.

Oil and gas pipelines (centered around Tulsa), electrical lines, cotton compresses and factories, and flouring mills are also indicated. Illustrations of a passenger train and an oil well below the title reinforce the main information on the map.

The Tulsa Oil Boom and Black Wall Street

During the Tulsa Oil Boom of the early 20th century, vast wealth flowed into Oklahoma, transforming Tulsa into a booming economic hub - and within it, the Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, emerged as one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States. During Reconstruction, which followed the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), the U.S. government enforced stricter terms the slave-owning American Indian nations that had allied with the Confederacy than on Southern States. Particularly in Oklahoma, American Indian nations were compelled to give their freed slaves (about 14% of the population of tribal lands) shares in communal lands and tribal rights. By the end of Reconstruction, Black tribal Freedmen held millions of acres in common with other tribal members and large individual allotments. While many of these allotments comprised the tribes' rockiest, driest, and most inhospitable land, such lands were exactly where, decades later, rich oil reserves were discovered. Black entrepreneurs subsequently capitalized on oil-related opportunities to reinvest in their communities. In particular, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa became a thriving center of Black-owned businesses, banks, newspapers, and cultural life - the Black Wall Street. In 1921, Black Wall Street was tragically destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre, when a white mob, fueled by resentment and false accusations, attacked the district - killing hundreds, burning homes and businesses, and erasing decades of Black success. The Tulsa Oil Boom brought immense wealth, but also underscored the deep racial inequities of the time, with Black Wall Street representing both the heights of Black economic achievement and the devastating consequences of systemic racism.

Roads, Rails, and Oil

This map was produced at the dawn of the automotive age when railroads were still the main means of intercity travel and freight transport. As the state was being formed, it was also undergoing a massive oil boom that continues to define its economy today. This was a major reason for the density of rail infrastructure seen here. Outsiders rushed in, first in land grabs in the late 19th century and later as economic migrants to work in the oil and gas industry. Boomtowns sprang up overnight (and could disappear just as quickly once resources were exhausted). Tulsa, in particular, became the financial and administrative center of the oil boom, 'the oil capital of the world,' growing from a town to a teeming metropolis in a matter of years at the start of the 20th century.

The rights of Native Americans were often of secondary consideration in the scramble to exploit natural resources for profit. Even where Indians had relatively strong legal claims to their land and its resources (as with the Osage Nation) and consequently did acquire significant wealth in the early 20th century, legal requirements (such as that requiring a White 'guardian' for legal proceedings for all full and half-blood Indians) and the schemes of unscrupulous malefactors often led to Indians losing their legal rights over oil-rich lands through chicanery. In the most extreme case - the Osage Indian Murders of the 1920s (retold in the 2017 book and 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon) - a conspiracy was hatched by powerful rancher and political boss William Hale to simply kill dozens of Indians with legal claims to oil-producing lands and maneuver to gain control of their property. The uncovering of the Osage Indian Murders led to Congress scrapping the guardianship requirement and forbidding non-Osage from inheriting Osage-owned lands.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared in 1909 by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and printed by Woodard and Tiernan. It is the first edition, followed by multiple subsequent editions into the 1970s, though with decreasing regularity. This first edition is especially scarce, with cataloged examples only held by Yale University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.