I am sitting on the front porch of a shotgun shack staring out at an ominous darkness on the horizon. A black blizzard grows and draws nearer, swallowing up the sparse plant life of the open range, erasing a truck until it begins to engulf me as the low whisper of wind rises to a roar. I turn my head and I can see that the entire yard is fading into a swirl of dust and that the house behind me is being battered as well. This is the Dust Bowl. Although it’s almost a century in the past, a virtual reality headset brings it to life with wicked effectiveness. Welcome to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tulsa lies along the famous Route 66, the iconic American road from Chicago to Los Angeles. This road, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026, was the site of many road trips before President Dwight Eisenhower’s highway system was built. Back during the Dust Bowl it was the “Mother Road,” a term John Steinbeck coined in his classic book “The Grapes of Wrath.” The environmental disaster that ruined farms and the farmers who owned them left folks scrambling west for work in California. These days are gone but not forgotten.
