Where The Grapes of Wrath Begins [2]: McAlester, Oklahoma
Because of their remote locations, Steinbeck’s fictional settings in Oklahoma are not easily accessible for those who live outside the Great Plains. Fortunately, I have lived in two Great Plains states (Kansas and Nebraska) and the Midwestern state of Missouri for thirty-eight years, which makes it easy to access literary sites in the middle section of the continental United States. It is a pleasure to have captured some of the Steinbeck-related scenes in Oklahoma, where The Grapes of Wrath (1939) begins to unfold.
McAlester Where Tom Joad Spent Four Years for Homicide
McAlester is a small town in southeast Oklahoma with a population of 18,044 (2025 estimate, U.S. Census Bureau). It sits 90 miles south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the intersection of U.S. Routes 69 and 270. James Jackson McAlester, an American Confederate Army veteran and developer, founded the town in 1869. It is home to the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, as well as the Oklahoma State Penitentiary (OSP), where Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath serves four years for homicide. Built in 1908 and nicknamed “Big Mac,” OSP is a male maximum security prison.
McAlester appears 15 times in The Grapes of Wrath—mostly at the beginning of the story. When Casy learns that Tom Joad is out of prison, he asks whether life in prison was tolerable. With a laugh, Tom responds, “Oh, awright. You eat regular, an’ get clean clothes, and there’s places to take a bath. It’s pretty nice some ways. Makes it hard not havin’ no women.” When Tom reaches home, he tells Pa, “I drove truck at McAlester.” Later, at a migrants’ party in California, someone sings “McAlester Blues.” Meanwhile, near the end of the novel, Casy protects Tom from legal trouble. He tells Al, “If you mess in this your whole fambly, all your folks, gonna get in trouble. I don’ care about you. But your ma and your pa, they’ll get in trouble. Maybe they’ll send Tom back to McAlester.”
In December 2019, I visited McAlester on my way to and from Dallas, Texas. Interstate 44 West, which goes through St. Louis, Missouri, to Joplin, Missouri, eventually led to the Oklahoma Welcome Center on U.S. Route 69 near Miami, Oklahoma. A man and a woman in their fifties were handing out brochures, and the man found two from behind his seat and gave them to me. Out of curiosity, I asked him if he knew what McAlester is famous for. With a chuckle, he said, “The state penitentiary!” Neither he nor the woman seemed to know that the town is an initial setting of Steinbeck’s novel, which was not entirely surprising. (Unlike in East Asia, where writers and poets are cherished and memorialized by those from the same geographical background, many Americans are unfamiliar with the authors connected to the places where they live.) Steinbeck wrote about migrants from Oklahoma in The Grapes of Wrath. They seemed only half-interested.
After driving approximately 100 miles south on Highway 69, I began to see the signs of McAlester. Holding a cell phone camera inside my moving car, I began to take some pictures of those signs. After driving two dozen more miles, the town came into view down the gentle hill. It looked like a typical Great Plains town, a town surrounded by open fields, where drivers stop briefly for gas and food before resuming their journey. Having known the connection between the town and Steinbeck’s novel, however, I was eager to see the place and stay there for a few minutes. My car had enough gas for the next three or four hours, but I still bought gas in McAlester just to prove that I was there. (Among my sentimental hobbies is collecting sales receipts from well-known literary destinations.) While pumping gas, I captured images of Route 69, gas stations, and back streets, some of which readers can see on the succeeding pages.
In March 2022, I had an opportunity to visit McAlester again—to take some more photos, especially those of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. This time, I was more comfortable getting help from my car GPS, which took me to the exact location without confusion.1 The OSP, looking big and white, sat on 1,556 acres (6.30 km2) and, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, held more than 750 inmates as of April 2017. Although no guard was visible, tall fences were topped with barbed wire, and many security cameras must have been monitoring the corrections facilities and the surrounding areas. Because of my desire to avoid being questioned by a security officer, I took several quick photos from inside the car and then drove away.
Note
[1] On the way back from the Penitentiary, I also viewed the mural of the poet John Berryman (1914-1972), who was born in McAlester and lived there for ten years. The mural stands across a narrow street from the McAlester Public Library.
McAlester, Oklahoma, is located 120 miles southeast of Oklahoma City and 90 miles south of Tulsa. The city is home to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison that appears in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as the place where Tom Joad serves four years for homicide. Composite image based on map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The way to McAlester. Part of the Great Plains, Oklahoma is an agricultural state in which farms and ranches stretch all the way to the Texas border.
A sign on Highway 69 South announces that McAlester is a half a mile away.
McAlester signs on Highway 69. On the right side of the top photo is a church with the catchphrase “Jesus Saves.” Like Texas, Oklahoma is a heavily evangelical state with numerous churches. In The Grapes of Wrath, the word Jesus appears 129 times. Although the name sometimes appears blasphemously, the frequency of the word itself suggests the pervasive presence of evangelical Christianity in the region.
A southbound Highway 69 and part of the town of McAlester viewed from a roadside gas station.
Part of the business route of Highway 69 in McAlester.
McAlester brochures from the Oklahoma Welcome Center near Miami, Oklahoma. The open brochure reads in part:
J.J. McAlester […] was immortalized as a character in the novel True Grit, which was made into feature films in 1969 and 2010. McAlester is the home of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, site of a former “behind the walls” prison rodeo from which ESPN’s Sports Center once broadcast. Sometimes Oklahomans refer to the state prison simply as “Big Mac” or “McAlester,” and the town is referenced in that manner in the opening pages of The Grapes of Wrath when Tom Joad is released from there. […]
A southbound Highway 69 and part of the town of McAlester viewed from a roadside gas station.
Part of the business route of Highway 69 in McAlester.
Water tower in downtown McAlester.
A street sign points to the location of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary (OSP) in McAlester, which is mentioned in chapter two of The Grapes of Wrath. Paroled from the Penitentiary, Tom Joad hitchhikes a truck, telling the driver, “I ain’t keepin’ quiet about it. Sure I been in McAlester. Been there four years….”
Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Barbed wire fences of the McAlester State Penitentiary.
About the Author
Professor of English and Creative Writing and Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Theology, Missouri Baptist University
John J. Han, PhD, is the author, editor, co-editor, or translator of 38 books. His forthcoming book, Echoes from the Hills: Critical Essays on Ozarks Literature (co-edited with C. Clark Triplett), will be published by the University of Arkansas Press. He has also published more than 3,000 poems, primarily haiku, in a wide range of journals and anthologies. In addition to his long tenure at Missouri Baptist University, he has taught at Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Washington University in St. Louis. He has also served as a visiting scholar at Georgia College & State University and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.
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