People who’ve never been here think Oklahoma is flat. They imagine Oklahoma as having endless flat plains, empty horizons, dusty, red dirt roads and not much else. And while Oklahoma does have magnificent prairies and rather famously red dirt roads, there is much more to the story.

But old myths die hard. Oklahoma will forever be associated with Dust Bowl imagery. Popular culture has shaped public imagination into believing Oklahoma is one flat, predictable stretch of prairie — a landscape written off as uninteresting, uninspiring and generally unimportant.

None of those things are true. Oklahoma's landscapes are complex and layered and rich in ways I guarantee will surprise and intrigue you.

If you never thought of Oklahoma as worthy enough a place to journey or scenic enough to be a photography destination, you would be flat wrong (pun intended).

Oklahoma isn’t one landscape — it’s dozens. Oklahoma sits at a crossroads. It’s a crossroads of ecosystems, a convergence of climates, a collision of terrains. It's a jumble of landforms and natural transitions so varied that defining Oklahoma with a single label is nigh impossible.

Geographically where would you place Oklahoma? Right on the edge of the South? Maybe close enough to be part of the American Southwest or is the state situated closer officially to a Mid-West designation? Actually, Oklahoma isn't just one of those things — its all those things.

Simply, the land of Oklahoma is where the West begins, the South reaches, the Midwest stretches, and mountains rise quietly in the east.

It's a state where all these things converge and why Oklahoma can proudly boast of 12 distinct ecoregions.

The complex nature of Oklahoma's natural environment makes it one of the most unexpectedly diverse places you will ever roam.

Oklahoma's soil gets its deep red color from the oxidation of iron in Permian-age rocks. The entire western half of Oklahoma is true, red dirt country. If you were in central Oklahoma and drove west toward the setting sun, you would find nearly every country road tinted that familiar red.

Get off the paved highway system and wander into Oklahoma's real interior — the miles and miles of square-mile sections. Explore the real Oklahoma. The Oklahoma most people don't see. And yes, there will be dust. In fact, wander around Oklahoma long enough and you'll carry some of that red dirt home with you.

Oklahoma red dirt is Oklahoma’s signature color. But Oklahoma's red earth is only one part of a much larger and more colorful landscape.

Oklahoma's landscape changes with the seasons:

Spring blooms in countless shades of green and colorful wildflowers dot the countryside

Summer greens prevail until trees and grasses slowly slip towards yellow

Fall, the red earth compliments the yellows and oranges

Winter mutes color so form and shape guide compositions

Ask someone outside of Oklahoma what our landscape looks like, and forests rarely make the list. Yet more than eleven million acres of forest land covers Oklahoma — more than half consists of oak and hickory, with elm, ash, cottonwood, loblolly and shortleaf pine filling out the rest.

People who live in central Oklahoma are probably familiar with the thick woods that quietly fill in parts of the surrounding countryside — those thick pockets of twisted oaks and stretches of woods that fill in along creek corridors and steep hillsides and dense patches between country fields. Theses are fragments of the Cross Timbers.

Once upon a time, all those patches of woods for hundreds of miles were connected in a solid wall of unforgiving forest. Washington Irving, author of Sleepy Hollow, wrote of the Cross Timbers in his book,
A Tour on the Prairies, calling the woods "forests of cast iron", saying, “I shall not easily forget the mortal toil and vexations of the flesh and spirit that we underwent… in our wanderings through the Cross Timber.”

The Cross Timbers stretched from what is now southern Kansas through central Oklahoma and into north-central Texas. The forest was a thick, impenetrable wall of dense blackjack, post oaks, thorny underbrush and sharp, clinging vines — a painful and vexing natural barrier that shaped movement, culture, and settlement of this region for centuries.

Visit the Keystone Ancient Forest near Sand Springs to explore a fascinating section of old-growth forest.

Pine and Hardwood Forests

Eastern Oklahoma is home to the Ouachita National Forest in the southeast and the Ozark foothills in the northeast. Places of dense woodlands that feel worlds away from the stark, red earth of western Oklahoma. Here, the terrain rises and folds, creating ridges, valleys, and secret waterfalls.

The Ouachita National Forest stretches about 35 miles into Oklahoma from Arkansas. Hardwoods and pines blanket the mountainous regions of LeFlore and Pushmataha Counties. There are numerous places to hike, camp and photograph forest compositions, including Billy Creek, Horse Thief Springs, Talimena State Park, and Wister Lake.

Forest in the Oklahoma Highlands

The forests of the Ozark Plateau that stretches into Oklahoma from Arkansas are completely unlike the forests of the Cross Timbers and Ouachita's.

Oak and hickory trees along with maple, dogwood and walnut fill a forest heavily characterized by the karst terrain. It's an uplifted highland deeply eroded by water, characterized by high bluffs, steep hollows, limestone caves, springs, sinkholes, and countless clear-running streams.

The perfect route to experience the Oklahoma Ozarks is along the Cherokee Hills Scenic Byway, which includes Highway 10 east of Tahlequah. The byway takes you through the scenic Cookson Hills and along Tenkiller Ferry Lake.

Float the Illinois River, an officially designated Oklahoma Scenic River, climb Sparrowhawk Mountain, hike in the J.T. Nickel Family Nature & Wildlife Preserve.

In south central Oklahoma, near Davis, Sulphur, Gene Autry, and Springer you are surrounded by the gentle rises of the Arbuckle Mountains. The Arbuckle's revel more than a billion years of deep Earth history in some outcrops — ancient rocks formed roughly 1.4 billion years ago, long before the mountains themselves were uplifted.

Uplifted, folded, and faulted, the terrain is characterized by cliffs, canyons, and exposed rock faces, with a deeply carved river canyon and countless karst springs, seeps, and cool, clear-running streams.

Explore the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, Turner Falls and Mountain Lake to experience the Arbuckle Mountains.

In southwestern Oklahoma, near Lawton, Altus, Mountain Park, and Cold Springs, the Wichita Mountains rise up like massive rock islands from the surrounding plains. Older than the Rockies by about 400 million years, the Wichita Mountains are ancient and ruggedly extreme in nature. Explore the mountain's range along the Wichita Mountains Scenic Byways and in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, where visitors can drive past dramatic granite peaks and wide stretches of mixed grass prairie teeming with wildlife.

Bison roam freely as stately sentinels of the prairie. Longhorn cattle graze across lush, never tilled grasslands. Prairie dogs pop up from their burrows, and elk move through the trees like ghosts.
The refuge's terrain is a photographer’s dream:

rugged granite peaks

clear reflective lakes

wild herds

dramatic sunrises and sunsets

open range and prairie landscapes

Explore the Wichita Mountains at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Great Plains State Park and Gloss Mountains State Park.

In southeast Oklahoma, near Poteau, Heavner, Talihina, and Big Cedar are a range of mountains trending east-west unlike every other mountain range in the United States outside of Alaska. The ancient Ouachita Mountains have countless springs and streams that carve their way down to clear, rocky rivers that flow through forested corridors.

Places where the Ouachita Mountains loom large on the horizon include some of this photographer’s favorite locations in Oklahoma—Broken Bow Lake, Beavers Bend State Park, the Glover, Little, and Kiamichi Rivers, and the Talimena Scenic Drive.

In northeast Oklahoma around Sallisaw, Stillwell, Tahlequah, Jay , Grove, Miami and Locust Grove, you are surrounded by forested hills of the Oklahoma Ozarks.

The ancient Ozark Uplift, rising in Missouri and Arkansas, extends into Oklahoma where it becomes the forested hills and clear‑water valleys of the Ozark Highlands, places known locally as the Cookson Hills, Boston Mountains, and the Cherokee Hills, and further north there are the Spavinaw Hills in the Springfield Plateau portion of the Ozark Highlands.

The region’s karst terrain produces caves, sinkholes, natural springs, seeps, numerous clear-running streams, and a terrain with high bluffs, cliffs, and steep wooded hollows where a unique and ecologically rich stream community teems with fish, crayfish, and macroinvertebrate.

Explore the Oklahoma Ozark Highlands at the Cookson Hills Wildlife Management Area, Tenkiller Ferry Lake, along the Illinois River Corridor, Natural Falls State Park, and Twin Bridges State Park on Grand Lake.