Oklahoma Department of Transportation
government agency in Oklahoma, United States
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) is an agency of the government of Oklahoma responsible for the construction and maintenance of the state's transportation infrastructure. Under the leadership of the Oklahoma secretary of transportation and ODOT executive director, the department maintains public infrastructure that includes highways and state-owned railroads and administers programs for county roads, city streets, public transit, passenger rail, waterways and active transportation. Along with the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, the department is the primary infrastructure construction and maintenance agency of the State.
ODOT is overseen by the Oklahoma Transportation Commission, composed of nine members appointed by the governor of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Senate and Oklahoma House of Representatives. Tim Gatz, a professional landscape architect with a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture, serves as the secretary of transportation and executive director of ODOT, as appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt in 2019. Gatz is also executive director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. The department was created in 1976 during the term of Governor David L. Boren. It superseded the Department of Highways, which was established in 1911. The Department of Transportation's mission statement is "The mission of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is to provide a safe, economical and effective transportation network for the people, commerce and communities of Oklahoma."
History
The predecessor agency to ODOT was the Department of Highways, which began operations in 1911, four years after Oklahoma statehood. The Department of Highways, consisting of four employees, was given an initial budget of $3,700.
“Oklahoma Department of Transportation” enters the record as government agency in Oklahoma, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Oklahoma, Department and Transportation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2171739. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1976 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oklahoma Department of Transportation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.