American Outback: The Oklahoma Panhandle in the Twentieth Century

American Outback: The Oklahoma Panhandle in the Twentieth Century. By Richard Lowitt. Plains Histories. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, c. 2006. Pp. xxii, 137. $21.95, ISBN 0-89672-558-8.)

While several states have geographic "panhandles," Oklahoma's westernmost section remains an anomaly. Only 165 miles long and 35 miles wide, this sliver of land still constitutes an American version of the Australian Outback-forbidding, sparsely populated, and often forgotten. As western historian Richard Lowitt explains in this brief text, however, the Oklahoma Panhandle has a history as colorful as it is unique. Its past is a story of opportunity and challenge, according to Lowitt, of accomplishment and despair.

From Lowitt' s description, three forces have guided the Panhandle's fatepolitics, economy, and geography. Originally unclaimed due to the confluence...