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Commerce in Oklahoma

The Indigenous people of the land that would become Oklahoma engaged in the production of market goods and the trade of those goods. Commerce has always been an activity of the people living here, but the shape of that production, the type of trade, and with whom the people traded has changed dramatically. From intertribal trade within a continental-sized network to trade with international partners for the state’s primary commodities—oil and agricultural products—the land that is now Oklahoma has always been connected to the rest of the world. Oklahoma was, and is, a crossroads of commerce.

A group of people, both Black and white, in a room at a meeting.

A commerce-focused publication from 1906

A group of people, both Black and white, in a room at a meeting.

Altus Chamber of Commerce, 1947 (1989.161.105, W. C. Austin Project, Museum of the Western Prairie, Oklahoma Historical Society).

A group of people, both Black and white, in a room at a meeting.

Boley’s Farmers & Merchants Bank (3377.1B.1, OHS Photograph Collection, OHS).