Flowers for Elk City, OK

The tallest thing in downtown Elk City is a retired drilling rig — Parker Rig No. 114 stands nearly eighteen stories over the old highway, a leftover boast from the years when the Anadarko Basin boom let this town call itself the Natural Gas Capital of the World. The boast built real things: a hospital bigger than an 11,500-person town has any right to, in Great Plains Regional on West Second Street; Ackley Park with its restored carousel and miniature train; and the National Route 66 Museum complex that pulls travelers off I-40 all summer. Flowers here move on two clocks — the steady one of birthdays and hospital rooms along Third Street and Country Club Boulevard, and the highway's clock, which delivers apology roses and welcome-home arrangements ordered from three states away by people whose families still live on these section roads.

Other Oklahoma cities.