We had started in Albuquerque that morning, driven through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, across the Texas Panhandle and the flat plains of Oklahoma to Oklahoma City.

The sun was setting when we reached downtown, home to the Oklahoma National Stockyards (www.onsy.com), established nearly a century ago. The meat-packing plants that had once been the heart of Oklahoma's livestock industry closed in the 1960s, but the Stockyards' thrice-weekly auctions still sell more than half a million head of cattle and other livestock each year. (Tours offered on Mondays.)

That part of the city, called Stockyards City (www.stockyardscity.org), is a retail district rooted in the cattle industry, with saddleries, shops selling Western wear, livestock feed and equipment, and galleries featuring Western art.

Also in Stockyards City is Cattlemen's Steakhouse, established in 1910, with red vinyl banquettes, cowboy art and a menu offering nine kinds of steaks, and the house specialty, lamb fries -- deep-fried lamb testicles. That's one taste of the Old West that I can pass up.

This is one in a series of postcards by Marjie Lambert, assistant Travel editor, who has been to all 50 states.