Unlocking the secrets of Oklahoma City's mysterious city

And since Blackburn, the director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, is a leading expert on downtown Oklahoma City history, his doubts carry some weight.

"I have never found any proof that it existed,” Blackburn said. "There's a lot of oral tradition and kind of elusive physical evidence. It's folklore. ... Hopefully someone can find some documents or diaries or something, but it was a community that would've been off the books.”

Aside from a few newspaper articles, little was published about the hidden Chinatown before 1969, when former Mayor George Shirk led a group of explorers, reporters and photographers into a large basement containing some Chinese artifacts.

While Shirk's expedition proved some Chinese had occupied basements, Blackburn said, it didn't provide definitive evidence of a larger, interconnected community.

"This is an unsolved mystery that is most intriguing,” Blackburn said. "It obviously has captured the attention of the public ... and I would like it to be true, but I still have not seen anything I would use to put it in one of my (history) books.”