this building other than they taking it over. every piece of war legislation decided on during that period of time was decided on in these two chambers, whether kentucky would remain neutral happened in these two chambers. all of those things are very significant and not many places can say they have both an old and new capitol. >> my name's bill parks. welcome to the state capitol of oklahoma. let's spend a little time looking at a beautiful building. start here with salmon layton. this is a 1915 drawing of the capitol. and i show this to folks so they understand the dome was a part of the plan in the beginning. the building was built without the dome between 1914 and 1917, did not build the dome then

because they ran out of money but they had built all of the supporting substructure for the dome. when we got around to building the dome, beginning in 2001, we were able to just start at the roof line and go up. the base of the building is covered with pink and black granite that comes from oklahoma. white indiana limestone on the main part. the dome's covered with a manmade stone and that's how they were able to match the building as well as they did. the floors of the capitol are alabama marble chosen for its durability. you'll see vermont marble in the base board baseboards, in steps. through the efforts of the nate, we have 100 pieces of new artwork and he's quick to add at no cost to oklahoma. this particular piece is by

wayne cooper. it's called the magic of petraeus and they're taking water that has oil in it to make medicine for arthritis and other diseases. this is governor mary fallon's office. governor fallon is not only the first woman, she was also the first lieutenant governor. around the corner from her office. they were elected separately so they are both republicans this time around and they are both elected for four-year terms. this is the guardian. sculpted it by one of our former state senators. senator haney is a full blood seminole creek indian. this represents all of the indians of oklahoma.

there are 39 tribes that have headquarters in oklahoma. looking at the general population, probably something in the neighborhood of 60 tribes. notice the spear. that means he's staying to protect the state capitol. >> is this an image of a particular person? >> no. it is as generic as he could make it so it represents all of the indians of oklahoma rather than having a particular person or a particular tribe. >> where is this? >> this is the hall of governors. it's a list of the former governors. all except the last three were done by leonard mcmurray for our statehood anniversary in 1892. william henry murray is my

favorite. he has more stories to be told than any other in the group. he was president of the constitutional convention and first speaker of the house of representatives. had to wait a while before he got to be governor but in the four years he was governor, he called out the oklahoma national guard more than 40 times. more than all the rest of them put together and overall kinds of things. there was a free bridge built across the red river to texas. the folks that had the toll bridges kept that bridge closed. he took the national guard down and they opened the free bridge and closed the toll bridge. during his administration, the price of oil dropped to 18 cents a barrel and he said we're not pumping oil until it goes back to at least a dollar. now, the one that i get a big kick out of is the problem we had with people scalping football tickets at the

university of oak okaklahoma. he was being sent to norman to be sure that nobody made money on their football tickets. his son, johnston, was governor and they're the only father and son governor so far. i think it's kind of ironic that johnston opened the first tu turnpike. and in the capitol, it has a lot of oklahoma symbolism in them. first of all, the big red figure in the middle represents the universal man or all oklahomans. and that means red man. so there's the red man. lower left-hand corner, you have the state wildflower, the indian blanket. right above that, kind of a purple area, that's our state

tree. our state bird. and by his other hand, an astronaut. there have been more astronauts going into space from oklahoma than any other state in the union. we're coming into the senate chamber. oklahoma's legislature meets the first monday of february. it has to be finished by the last friday of may. so they are in session four months out of the year. we have 48 state senators elected for four years. the lieutenant governor is the president of the senate but not active in that role probably in 70 years now. so the president protem really is the leader. from 1907 to 2006, the democrats had the majority so the pro tem was a democrat. 2006, we had a tie. they elected a democrat and a republican and alternated days as to who was conducting the business of the senate. i thought if lieutenant governor

was ever going to be involved, that would be it. it turned out the first year of that session there were no tie votes at all. in the second year, there were only four. so they really made that situation work. the picture is the constitutional convention, that was held in guthrie in 1906 and 1907. there were 112 men from oklahoma's territory, indian territory and the region that gathered there. in the center case, we have the original oklahoma state constitution. 110 pages long making it the longest state constitution in the country as it was originally written. i like to compare it to the united states constitution in its original form. it was four pages long. william murray, who presided later on, said probably 40 of the first 48 sections should have been done by the legislature. section 17, roughly half of the

document is the description of county boundaries, the names of the county seeds and the method for changing county boundaries. probably won't find that in another constitution in the country. and then over here, we have the gray seal that was used. if you go to guthrie, they'll tell you that we stole this from them. i'm of the opinion that it was not stealing because we did have an election in 1910. the people voted to move the capitol from guthrie to oklahoma city. the story about the midnight ride of the state seal, several versions of that story and all of them seem to stay in the middle of the night but the truth of the matter was, they had car trouble along the way, didn't get there until the next morning and brought the seal back the next day. this is the supreme court of the state of oklahoma.

originally, five justices elected by the people. today, there are nine. and they are appointed by the governor. now, once they are appointed in the next general election, their names will be on the ballot and we vote to retain them for six years and then every six years after that, their name will be on the ballot. a little bit about the room. the woodwork throughout this room is solid mahogany imported from the west indies in 1916. the pillars are one piece of solid vermont marble. each of these pillars weighs about 10,000 pounds. brought on the railroad because that was the way to move things in the 1910s. the ceiling and the decorative places along the wall, that's cast plaster done by mcnulty brothers of chicago. the supreme court meets mondays

and thursdays. they only meet when they have public interest, will they meet here in the courtroom. this court will probably handle something in the neighborhood of 2000 cases per year. most of the work of this court is how the lower courts are doing their work so it's not the kind of thing where you have to have oral arguments. a lot can be handled just on paper. >> is it common to have the supreme court housed in the capitol building? >> my understanding is, until the people of the court moved out last summer, that we were one of the very few states where all three branches of government were still in the capitol building. so apparently it is unusual for the supreme court to be housed in the capitol.

the great seal has our history in it. there are 45 small stars standing for the 45 states before oklahoma. in the large star, symbols of five of the many tribes that were forced to come to indian territory. starting at the top, the chickisaw and seminole creek and it makes a good picture of the combining of oklahoma territory and indian territory to make the state of oklahoma. this is right above the large paintings and there's a purple ring and that marks the beginning of new construction. so everything about that line was completed in october of 2002. we've had a dome on our capitol about nine years now. >> how long does it take for

them to add the dome? >> 16 months. started in april of '01 and finished by october of '02. the cost to fix this dome was approximately $22 million. of that sum, 20 million is privately financed. from the beginning, there was always a group of people who wanted to finish and build the dome. through the years, different groups have tried to raise money. govern governor keeting put the right group of people together to raise the money. his goal was to have the dome on the capitol by the centennial. so that we would have the capitol looking like it was supposed to look. as it was originally designed. the large paintings are by charles banks wilson. and he starts with the history of oklahoma coronado and the

spanish going across the panhandle in 1541. on their way to the lost cities of gold. this is trade on the early frontier. one of the interesting things about wilson, he does not make things up. so all of the people in his paintings are real people. all of the background scenes are actual oklahoma locations. the big indian in the middle here is joe benny mason. probably will never forget that because i had his twin granddaughters on tour one day and they made sure that everybody knew that that was their grandpa. this is the indians coming to indian territory. wilson calls it the indian immigration, which to me it sounded like they wanted to come here. i never have understood that. kind of in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a depiction of the trail of tears. the reason there's a steamboat in the middle of that painting

in the background, some of them were wealthy enough to come up the arkansas river by boat. the artwork, i think, is what draws people -- what draws me to the building. what sets the building apart. and just the stories that go with the artwork. you know, across the way, we've got will rogers. will was an actor, a cowboy, good ambassador to the world. people need to know that will rogers was from oklahoma. around to the left there, we have sequoia, a cherokee who developed the cherokee alphabet. and just a wonderful story, because he was not literate in another language and came up with what ling quists say was the best way to write