OKLAHOMA CITY – Fleeing the Great Depression and a drought unprecedented in American history, a vast wave of Oklahomans and Texans dubbed "Okies" loaded everything they could onto crowded vehicles during the 1930s and headed west for California. Today, in huge numbers, their grandchildren are moving back.

It doesn't take Loren O'Laughlin much time to come up with a reason why, in between bites of a burger at an Oklahoma City diner. "There aren't really people lined up on the streets here competing for a few scraps," said O'Laughlin, 23, who grew up in Sacramento but recently graduated from Oklahoma Christian University and opted to stay put. "Small businesses thrive here because networking is so easy."

As California housing prices went wild in the middle of this decade, hundreds of thousands of residents scratched their heads and moved to places where homes were still affordable, state and federal statistics show. When prices started falling and unemployment started rising, many continued to leave California for healthier job markets.

The result was five consecutive years when California saw more residents going to other states than coming. Although many stayed closer to home – Nevada, Oregon, Arizona – the mid-South saw a large influx.

From 2004 through 2007, about 275,000 Californians left the Golden State for the old Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma and Texas, twice the number that left those two states for California, recent Internal Revenue Service figures show. In fact, the mid-South gained more residents from California during those four years than either Oregon, Nevada or Arizona. The trend continued into 2008.

As a result, it's easy to find Californians – even former Sacramentans – living and working in Oklahoma City, a capital of the American heartland.

Ask these Okies-in-reverse why they traded the Golden State for the Sooner State – named for settlers who came there sooner than the Homestead Act allowed – and you'll hear a lot of similar themes: easier to find a job; cheaper to buy or rent a home; better place to make a fresh start. Ask them why they stay in Oklahoma and they'll add to that list a deep optimism that it's a place where things are about to take off.

"Oklahoma City is like Sacramento back when the Kings were in the playoffs," said Branddon Jones, 26, who moved about a year ago to get out of Del Paso Heights. "It's growing. You can get a job. It's just crazy."

Two different cities

A lot of that has to do with the downtown core, particularly an area called Bricktown where, on a recent Thursday, former Sacramentan Tim Higgins sat on a restaurant patio, watching water taxis weave through a nearby canal.

Around Higgins was a vast collection of old warehouses that sat abandoned as recently as 15 years ago. That was before the city's residents – though relatively conservative – passed a temporary 1-cent sales tax increase to improve downtown; before the funds from that tax increase built a baseball stadium, an arena (now occupied by an NBA team), a canal and a library; before at least 1,000 new housing units sprang up within walking distance of where Higgins was sitting.

Now those warehouses are warrens of shops and eateries, cozying up to the meandering canal.

"This would be the equivalent of Old Sacramento," said Higgins, 47, "except it's much more happening."

From the restaurant patio, Higgins could see a large crane working. Just to his south, workers toiled on a massive project to move a federal interstate away from downtown to make way for a park.

The bustle is very different from what Higgins, a videographer, witnessed back home before he moved out in October.

"When I left, all construction had stopped throughout California," he said. "Here I see a lot of construction, a lot of new businesses."

Slow and steady

Watching tax revenues gush into California city coffers as housing prices skyrocketed a few years ago, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett couldn't avoid a twinge of envy. He doesn't feel that way now.

Call The Bee's Phillip Reese, (916) 321-1137.