Massive Historic Oklahoma Mansions You Can Tour

There's a restaurant in Rhode Island called the White Horse Tavern that is 120+ years older than the United States of America. As a history buff, it's on my Bucket List to eat there one day, but until I can convince my beach-loving family that anything cool exists in Rhode Island, I'll have to limit myself to day trips around Oklahoma.

Oklahoma does have a reputation of being a fly-over state, that there's nothing cool or historically old here. Being such a young state, it's understandable that's the perception, but real people know perception is rarely the accurate reality.

Oklahoma is far more interesting than people give us credit for. In the earliest days it was all about the land runs of course - there were actually seven, not just the famous 1889 run - and the Sooner State is making weird history now as a green energy leader for America. There's more to Oklahoma than anyone realizes.

Of course, most of that history is tied up in the oil industry. From the initial massive booms to the incredibly depressing busts, our state history is full of them. Luckily, those booms and busts left a mark on the state that we all get to enjoy, in the form of beautifully historic mansions, which were not all, but mostly built with oil money.

The Marland Mansion was my closest big oil baron house on this list. It is a sprawling property, but when built in the early 20th Century, it's sort of neat to see what people thought was impressive back then. The bedrooms aren't nearly as big as your average American single-family home is now, and the decor was so tacky. It's fun to walk through to see how they lived back then.

Of course, that mansion in my hometown was built on a boom, and when the bust came through, they turned the house over to history and built another big, but more modest home across town. It's also open to the public now, but nobody would call it a mansion, even in those days.

If you're up for a good day trip, here are some historic Oklahoma mansions to check out.