Tulsa World BY GENE CURTIS
Mar 16, 2024
An Oklahoma Highway Patrol car cruises the Turner Turnpike.
Courtesy Oklahoma Turnpike Authority
Oklahoma didn't need a state police force in its early days -- each county had a sheriff and deputies to enforce the law, and the larger cities had their police forces.
There were few cars, and the state's primitive highways discouraged speeding.
But that need changed in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the advent of better roads, a growing highway fatality toll and faster cars used by bank robbers and other criminals who could commit a crime and flee into another county where a pursuing sheriff had no jurisdiction.
The number of cars on the highways had increased from about 6,500 in 1912 to more than 600,000 by 1929 and the traffic fatality toll had grown to about 500 per year in the late 1920s.
It was an era that spawned big-name criminals such as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, the Barker family, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd and others who took advantage of the antiquated police setup.
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