by Renée Haines

A century ago, a shot fired at high noon signaled the start of the famous Oklahoma land rush, when tens of thousands of pioneers literally raced by foot, horseback and covered wagon to stake their claim to new opportunities in a young territory. Today a new, quieter kind of Oklahoma land rush is under way, aimed at newcomers more likely to arrive by corporate jet to a state attracting wide attention with unprecedented business and industry investment incentives.

Oklahoma is making billion-dollar investments in its roads and a massive new industrial shell building program to ease Corporate America's way to a state with land enough still for the next century's newcomers. The state offers a unique set of cash-back investment incentives that already have benefited dozens of companies ranging from American Airlines to WorldCom. Now, new federal legislation is adding the promise of added incentives when qualified companies invest in Oklahoma's former Native American lands, which happen to cover more than two-thirds of the state.

"This is the new Oklahoma," says Leo Presley, director of the Oklahoma Dept. of Commerce. Manufacturers alone invested more than US$150 million in Oklahoma in 1996, with an additional $75 million in manufacturing and processing industry investments counted by mid-1997. Companies announcing new moves or expansions of existing facilities this year ranged from Ford Motor Co. and WorldCom in Tulsa, to General Motors in Oklahoma City, Electron Corp. in Blackwell and GEA Rainey Corp. at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa.

"Ten years ago, we were largely related to the energy industry. Today we're getting the whole spectrum, from high-tech manufacturing to telecommunications," Presley says. "Energy is still a critical element, but it doesn't play near the role it did a decade ago. Right now, we're talking to some major semiconductor industry players." Diversity is what Oklahoma's economic development experts are convinced will protect the state from earlier economic booms that eventually turned bust.