Past. Present. Future.

IDEC has arranged the following tours of iconic locations in Tulsa.

If you are interested in participating in any of these tours, please RSVP when registration opens in January. All tours will take place on March 7.

The Gathering Place Tour – A Riverfront Destination

Experience and learn about Tulsa’s Gathering place—voted Time Magazine’s World’s Greatest Places and best new attraction in the country by USA TODAY in 2019.  At $465 million, the Gathering Place is the largest private gift to a community park in U.S. history.  Spanning 100 acres, The Gathering Place located along the Arkansas River, is a place for all Tulsans. The Park includes trails, places to play, ponds and ecosystems, a boat house for kayaking, and many other places for exploration and interaction.  World-renowned landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates were intentional with their eco-friendly strategy and natural symbiotic landscape design including the planting of 5,800 evergreen and deciduous trees and more than 8 acres of meadows mimicking the tallgrass and shortgrass prairies native to Oklahoma. Integration of sustainability practices are willfully incorporated and include an entirely automated LED lighting system, sustainable water management by re-circulating the pond’s nearly six million gallons of water through the adjacent wetlands to conserve and clean the  water thereby effectively eliminating the need for treatment of the water with chemicals, and the park maintenance facility is largely underground, which naturally insulates the building and reduce demand for heating and cooling.

Gilcrease Museum Tour

The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, known as Gilcrease Museum, houses a comprehensive collection of the art, culture and history of North America. Thomas Gilcrease, a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation, established Gilcrease Museum in 1949 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Today the interdisciplinary collection contains more than 350,000 items. The museum represents hundreds of Indigenous cultures from across North and South America, with material culture and archaeology ranging from 12,000 BCE to the 21st century. The collection includes more than 350 years of American paintings, sculptures and works on paper, including the largest public holdings of art of the American West.  Beautiful gardens and grounds extend beyond the Gilcrease collections and exhibitions. Themed gardens are developed on 23 of the museum’s 460 acres, often using the Gilcrease collections as a guide.  The museum is owned by the City of Tulsa, which has partnered with The University of Tulsa to steward the museum.

Art Deco Tour

During the 1920s, Tulsa became an oil boom town with new refineries being built along the Arkansas River.  Along with the boom came wealth and the City of Tulsa remains home to world-renown Art Deco architecture.  This guided tour will begin at the Boston Avenue Methodist Church with its magnificent Art Deco design based upon the classic Gothic style.  The controversy remains as to whether the church was designed by Bruce Goff or his teacher Adah Robinson who was a member of the congregation.  Following a tour of the church, guides will take participants on a journey of some of the best Art Deco buildings in downtown Tulsa including “Philcade”, an office building commissioned by oil mogul Waite Phillips who also had a private tunnel designed from his office building to art deco apartment across the street in order to ensure safety for himself and family moving back and forth between buildings.  The Art Deco of Tulsa is truly amazing and this is a jewel of a tour to experience this style at its best.

In addition to organized tours, there are many activities and attractions located throughout the city of Tulsa.