Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium
EntertainmentGaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, on the east side of the University of Oklahoma campus, is the largest sports venue in the state of Oklahoma. Known as the Palace on the Prairie, it seats 80,126 fans, and OU has sold out every regular-season home game there since the 1999 season. The 2024 season marked the stadium's 100th and the Sooners' first as members of the Southeastern Conference.
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Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
CulturalThe Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History traces its origin to an 1899 mandate from the Territorial Legislature to found a natural history museum on the University of Oklahoma campus. On May 1, 2000, the museum opened its current 198,000-square-foot facility, housing 12 collections, labs, libraries, and exhibit space. Its treasure-chest building now holds more than 10 million objects, from vertebrate fossils to Native American language collections, spanning over 4 billion years of Oklahoma's natural history.
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Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
CulturalThe Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is the University of Oklahoma's art museum, with a growing permanent collection of more than 20,000 objects spanning Native American art, art of the American Southwest, 20th-century American painting and sculpture, ceramics, photography, and Asian art. In 2000 the university received the Aaron M. and Clara Weitzenhoffer Collection, 22 paintings and 11 works on paper by Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Van Gogh, the most important gift of French Impressionism ever made to an American public university.
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Lake Thunderbird State Park
NaturalLake Thunderbird State Park sits on the shores of the 6,070-acre Lake Thunderbird, a Bureau of Reclamation reservoir framed by oak-covered hills and sandy shores with about 86 miles of shoreline east of the city. The lake hosts over a million visitors each year for largemouth bass, catfish, and walleye fishing, boating from two marinas, Calypso Cove and Little River, and horseback riding, hiking, and mountain biking trails, plus the Discovery Cove Nature Center.
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National Weather Center
TechnologyThe National Weather Center, dedicated on September 29, 2006 on a 22-acre site at Jenkins Avenue and State Highway 9, is a 244,000-square-foot, $69 million building that houses University of Oklahoma, NOAA, and state weather organizations, including the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Storm Prediction Center. Tours are offered by advance reservation, and visitors can see the Science On a Sphere globe display and the Dorothy and Toto tornado props from the movie Twister.
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