Road Trip 2018 - Day 28 - Guthrie OK

We began our meander back to Elderfleet Command HQ in Albuquerque today by driving from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Guthrie, Oklahoma (Home of the Fighting Blue Jays, Go Jays). Our choice of Guthrie had nothing to do with anything we were looking to see or visit. It was where one of Captain Spouse's cousin's lived. She hadn't seen her in forever and since they are connected actively on Facebook, she thought this was a good time to reconnect.

CS (Captain Spouse) had gotten the impression from pictures posted by said cousin on said social media site that Guthrie might have some things of interest to see or photograph. What we did not expect was to find an incredible history open up for us.

First let's introduce our cast of characters

Prime Cousin G

Husband of Prime Cousin B

Another Cousin we didn't expect N

And Husband of Cousin N

It turns out that Husband of Prime has lived in Guthrie his whole life and is totally seeped in its history. Here is a link to more detail on it, but the brief story is that it was a tiny territorial town when the Land Run of 1889 took place where lands given to dispossessed Native Americans was yet again taken from them. The mass influx of people increased the population and overnight - I mean within a year or two - a modern (for the time) brick building city with water, sewer, electricity, a trolley, etc sprung up. Promoters for the town secured for it the position of capital. But Oklahoma City soon outstripped it in economic importance and in under 20 years had organized a movement and election to get it made state capital. This cut Guthrie's growth and importance off at the knees. The town never recovered.

See this street

Imagine now eight blocks like it all being built within a couple of years

Examples of the architecture

Other stuff in Guthrie

Supposedly the smallest National Park in existence

An error made this 10 feet by 10 feet rather than a 1000 feet by 1000 feet

Signs like this were throughout the town announcing this history of this or that building

A library from funds of Andrew Carnegie from the same period

As well as a Masonic Temple

Prime Cousin G likes this Apothecary's Garden

A LOT of the plants within were good for arthritis, hemorrhoids and syphilis. Not sure what that indicates

One side note. Turns out that all four of the cousins and spouses have some significant Cherokee Indian blood in them, something that evidently they have only recently come to recognize. It was very interesting to here their feelings on the Land Run, Trail of Tears, and how Native Americans have been treated even though from their personal history they were raised and look like Europeans.