Tulsa county is located in northeast Oklahoma with the city of Tulsa being named as the county seat. The area was originally settled in 1836 by the Creek Indians from Alabama at the end of their forced removal known as the "Trail of Tears."

Although George Perryman's ranch house is pressed into service in 1879 as the area's first post office and officially given the name Tulsa, it wasn't until H.C. Hall arrived 3 years later that the town began to grow in an organized manner with the building of a roundhouse, a depot and a section house. The first store, hotel and residence went up later that same year, along with a coal mine, a barber shop, and a cemetery.

The major waterway in the county is the Arkansas River which flows to the southeast from Keystone Lake on its western edge.

The Tulsa area is home to several institutions of higher learning including the University of Tulsa and Oral Roberts University.

The county population on July 1, 1999, was 548,296, an increase of 44,955 over the 1990 census.