Here is something most Tulsans don’t know about the Golden Driller: the man is 76 feet tall, weighs 43,500 pounds, and leans against an actual oil derrick that was drilled into the ground and cemented in place. He is not bolted to a base like some civic trophy. He is, in a very literal sense, planted. Which feels appropriate for a city that pulled its first fortune out of the earth.
So what’s actually worth doing out at Expo Square, if you’ve never gone on purpose?
Start with the statue itself, because you’ve probably seen him from the highway and assumed you’d seen enough. You haven’t. Pull into the main lot off 21st Street and walk up to the base. The detail work is legitimately strange — the painted boots, the pressed slacks, the hard hat tilted at a confident angle. He has the expression of a man who is absolutely certain he is about to make a very good decision. The Oklahoma Oil Workers Statue, which is what he’s formally called, was made the Oklahoma state monument in 1979, which means he outranks a lot of things in this state, and I find that genuinely funny.
The surrounding Expo Square complex is Tulsa’s fairgrounds, and on a non-event weekend it’s half ghost town, half low-key interesting. The buildings are a strange architectural mix — some WPA-era brickwork, some utilitarian metal sheds, some faded signage for trade shows that probably ended in 1987. The entire grounds have a pleasantly deserted quality on off-weekends, like a county fair that everybody forgot to leave. Walk around. There’s a surprising amount to look at if you’re the kind of person who likes industrial relics and old paint.
The action picks up when the Tulsa State Fair runs in late September and early October — one of the biggest in the region, drawing over a million visitors and featuring the full carnival infrastructure: deep-fried everything, livestock barns, demolition derby, midway games with implausible stuffed animals. Admission runs around $12-$15 for adults, with rides and food costing extra, and parking is a whole additional negotiation. Go on a weekday if you can. The fair is genuinely worth it for the agricultural exhibits alone, which sounds like something your grandfather would say and is also correct.
Outside of fair season, Expo Square hosts gun shows, swap meets, the annual Vintage Tulsarama market, and the Tulsa Flea Market — which operates most weekends and is the real reason to make the drive if you’re not there for the statue. The flea market sprawls through several buildings and the outdoor lots, and it’s deeply unpredictable in the best way: vintage furniture, secondhand tools, handmade jewelry, questionable taxidermy, oil field memorabilia. Spend two hours and leave with something you didn’t know you needed. Budget anywhere from nothing to embarrassingly much, depending on your self-control.
Parking at Expo Square is free on non-event days, which is, frankly, one of the more refreshing sentences you’ll read about anything in 2024. The grounds sit in the Midtown-adjacent fairgrounds area, easily reached off US-64 or 21st Street.
The Golden Driller doesn’t ask for anything. He just stands there, petroleum-confident, watching the highway traffic. But standing at his feet and looking up at seventy-six feet of painted fiberglass optimism is a stranger, more affecting experience than you’d expect from a parking lot landmark. Tulsa built him to say something about itself. Whether that something has aged gracefully is a question worth sitting with.
