ONEOK Field, Tulsa, Guia do visitante e o que fazer por perto

ONEOK Field is the downtown ballpark of Tulsa, Oklahoma, at 110 N Elgin Ave, home of the Tulsa Drillers minor league baseball team. It stands on Archer Street, at the southern edge of the historic Greenwood District, once known as Black Wall Street, so a visit here is about local history as much as baseball.

The story behind it

The ballpark opened in 2010 and is named for the energy company that holds its naming rights. The ground around it tells an older story. Archer Street and the Frisco railroad tracks once formed the southern boundary of Greenwood, the Black district of Tulsa, which began to take shape in the early 1900s.

Black entrepreneurs such as O. W. Gurley, who arrived in Tulsa in 1906, and J. B. Stradford invested heavily here. In a segregated city, Greenwood grew into a prosperous district of its own, with lawyers, doctors, shops, hotels and theaters. Booker T. Washington is said to have called it Negro Wall Street. In 1921 the district was destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre. The death toll has never been settled. The count at the time was 36, a state commission in 2001 identified 39 victims, and some estimates run far higher. Almost nothing visible around the ballpark today dates from that era, which is why the history is worth knowing before you look around.

What to look for

• The ballpark itself, a modern stadium set right at the edge of downtown, which shows how much of the old Greenwood streetscape has been replaced.
• Archer Street, the old southern boundary of Greenwood, where you can picture the busy business district that once stood just north of you.
• The mix of parking lots, new buildings and open ground nearby, which makes the scale of what was lost easy to grasp.
• The Greenwood Rising History Center, a short walk east at the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street, which opened in 2021.

Tips for your visit

• Allow 15 to 20 minutes to see the stadium from outside, and more if you continue on foot to Greenwood Rising.
• Going inside generally means attending a game or event, so check the current schedule if you want to see the field.
• Late afternoon and early evening are pleasant for walking the area, and game nights bring more life to the streets.
• Downtown Tulsa is compact, so the ballpark, Greenwood and nearby streets are easy to link on foot. Check current opening hours for any museum you plan to enter.

See it on a quest

Ghost Hunt in Tulsa passes ONEOK Field on foot as one stop of a longer walk through this part of the city. The app tells you about each place as you arrive and sets a puzzle in what is in front of you. It is a ticketed quest, and one ticket covers the whole group.

Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in Tulsa suits you if you like a mystery theme. You reach the ballpark on foot, hear about the place as you arrive and solve a puzzle on the spot. One ticket covers the whole group.

Lucky Treasure Hunt: The Golden Shamrock in Tulsa is a treasure hunt that leads you through the streets around the stadium. You get the story of each stop in the app and a puzzle to solve there, and one ticket covers the whole group.