Located on Historic Route 66 in Craig County, Vinita is a small city of around 6,500 people in northeastern Oklahoma's Green Country. It was one of the first towns established in Indian Territory after the Civil War, and that layered history — Cherokee Nation, railroad, Route 66 — gives it more texture than a glance suggests.
The historic downtown has the Hotel Vinita and a handful of antique shops and small businesses worth a browse. The Eastern Trails Museum covers the town's Native American and frontier history honestly and for free. Clanton's Cafe has been feeding Route 66 travelers since 1927 and remains the best meal in town — order the chicken fried steak. The Will Rogers Monument in the town centre marks the connection to Oklahoma's most famous son, who grew up in the region.
Ten miles east on Highway 28A, Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park is one of the great folk art environments in the American Southwest — a retired schoolteacher's 24-year project of concrete sculpture, free to visit and completely unlike anything else on the road. The Glass House McDonald's spanning the Turner Turnpike is worth a photograph if not a meal.