This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The hit-the-highway anthem "Route 66" plugs one place on its 2,500-mile journey for its beauty. But that was only because no other place rhymed with "oh so pretty."

For years, cross-country drivers pulling into Oklahoma City ("OKC") found a flat, sprawling, dead-quiet city with three crisscrossing interstates begging to take you elsewhere. Pretty? No, a plain Jane at best.

But that was then. Now, as Oklahoma braces for its 100th birthday this November, its capital is strutting about a stunning makeover. After the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building downtown, the city surprisingly voted in an enormous sales tax, which has ushered on more than $2 billion in public/private projects.

Among the enhancements are a new dome atop the long-headless capitol building, a new civic center, library and history museum, and an American Indian museum set to open by 2009. The city finally filled the North Canadian River too. "It was famous," locals like to say, "because it had to be mowed."

I know, because I was a local once. When I worked downtown in the early '90s, you tore out at 5 p.m. sharp. Now many locals come then - for dinner and drinks, NBA games, Stones concerts, foreign films, rock climbing in a converted grain silo, or to feed Fido in new loft apartments on Bricktown's mile-long canal.

Route 66 aside, much of OKC can be seen on foot. Downtown is peppered with Art Deco buildings built in the 1920s and '30s that are fun to walk by, or into. Two old-timer (and long closed) Art Deco hotels reopened in the past year, and already their lounges buzz with after-work drinkers. Others hoof it a few blocks west to the recently relocated, Art Deco-inspired Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

Footsteps fall below the streets too. Connecting many buildings is an otherworldly 3,000-foot network of commuter tunnels built in the 1970s. A recent $1.6 million project has rechristened this previously glum, uninspired catacomb as "the Underground," with artful, glowing hallways (and a Chinese restaurant) lit by gold, mauve and sky-blue bulb displays.

One hallway leads north a few blocks to near the sobering Oklahoma City Memorial, the site of the 1995 bombing. The touching site features two walls marked with the time of the blast and 168 bronze chairs - one for each victim - facing a reflecting pool.

For food, many locals make a beeline for Bricktown, a growing warehouse district a five-minute walk from downtown. Tex-Mex and blues-soaked barbecue joints line the mile-long San Antonio-style canal, which turns past a baseball park and Flaming Lips Alley (named so in 2006 for the local alt-rock band).

It's a lively place, but more memorable is the wonderfully authentic Vietnamese food in the scrappy Asian District, centered 20 blocks northwest at NW 23rd Street and Classen Boulevard. A few years ago, local protests saved the area's centerpiece, the huge geodesic Gold Dome (1958), from becoming another chain store. It's now a multicultural center.

Despite all the changes, you can't ignore OKC's beginnings, when guys in cowboy hats set up the city on one hey-ho day during the 1889 land rush. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum - aka the "cowboy hall of fame" - has long stood out as the city's top attraction. But more crusty and fun are the stockyards, southwest of downtown, where you can amble on plank walkways over cow pens.

Inside the bidding area is Longhorn Cafe, where pencil-thin guys with Wrangler's and moustaches break from bids for a snack. I asked one how he could make a homemade peach cobbler go down with the gutting stench of cow dung in the air. He said, "Well, you just got to choose what you smell."

Even the beautified OKC can't be pretty all the time.

Getting there

* I-40, I-44 and I-35 meet in downtown Oklahoma City. Several airlines fly into Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport, five miles southwest of downtown.

* Amtrak has daily service to Fort Worth, Texas (4 1/2 hours).

What to see

* The Oklahoma National Stockyards Exchange (405-235-8675, Agnew and Exchange St., a mile south of I-40) holds auctions Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m. "till all the cows are sold."

* The Oklahoma City Museum of Art (405-236-3100, 415 Couch Drive, http://www.okcmoa.com) houses a huge Dale Chihuly glass-art exhibit.

* For rock climbing, OKC Rocks (405-319-1400, 200 SE 4th St., http://www.okcrocks.com) is south of Bricktown.

* The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (405-478-2250, 1700 NE 63rd St., www.nationalcowboy museum.org) is five miles north of downtown, via I-235 to I-44 east.

Where to stay

* A 1910 Art Deco landmark downtown, the boutique-style Colcord (405-601-4300, http://www.colcordhotel.com, 15 N. Robinson Ave., from $179) reopened last year.

* Cheaper chain hotels are at the intersection of I-40 and I-44, a couple of miles west of downtown.