539 Area Code – Tulsa, Oklahoma: Location, Time Zone & History

Area code 539 went into service on April 1, 2011, as an overlay for the 918 numbering plan area in northeastern Oklahoma, anchored by Tulsa. It was the first overlay ever implemented in the state, introduced to relieve number exhaustion and preceded by mandatory ten-digit local dialing that began just weeks earlier, on March 5, 2011. The 918 code it overlays has a longer history of its own, having been split from area code 405 in 1953 to give Tulsa and the surrounding region a numbering identity separate from the rest of Oklahoma.

Beyond Tulsa, the shared 918/539 territory reaches Broken Arrow, Bartlesville, Muskogee, and Sapulpa, among other cities. Industry in the region centers on:

• Energy, particularly oil and gas
• Aviation and aerospace
• Finance
• Telecommunications and technology
• Manufacturing

Tulsa's early-twentieth-century oil boom left behind one of the largest concentrations of Art Deco architecture in the United States. The city's Greenwood District, historically known as "Black Wall Street," was the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a pivotal event in American history. Cain's Ballroom, often called the "Carnegie Hall of Western Swing," hosted Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and Tulsa is also home to the University of Tulsa, Oral Roberts University, and the Philbrook Museum of Art.