Oklahoma A. and M. College

The college's founding bill was a fight over money. Meeting in the McKennon Opera House in Guthrie, the First Legislative Assembly took up Governor George W. Steele's request for a land-grant college, but every county wanted the federal funding that came with the college and its agricultural experiment station. The Populist George Gardenhire pushed through a compromise bill, which Steele signed on the session's last day. Financial trouble, ineptness and corruption slowed the first years. The college became Oklahoma State University on July 1, 1957, and Old Central entered the National Register in 1971.

What the plaque says

Oklahoma A. and M. College Serves the State by instruction, experimentation and extension service. Established Dec. 25, 1890, by First Legislative Assembly of Oklahoma Ter. Prairie broken for experimental farm, 1891. "Old Central" dedicated, 1894. Exten- sion Division established, 1915. Oklahoma Historical Society and State Highway Commission 1950

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cherokee Strip Museum and Rose Hill School — 19 mi
  Perry's museum of the Cherokee Outlet, in a town that was a land office on bare prairie the morning of September 16, 1893 and held some 25,000 people that night.
• Pawnee Nation Museum — 21 mi
  The Pawnee Nation's own museum in Pawnee, keeping the Nation's objects and the record of a military tradition it traces from the Pawnee Scouts of 1864 to the code talkers of World War II.
• Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library — 26 mi
  The 1902 Carnegie Library in Guthrie where Oklahoma's statehood was proclaimed in 1907, saved from demolition in 1972 by adding a museum of the seventeen territorial years beside it.

More markers nearby

• Last "Boomer" Town — steps away
• Stillwater — 0.9 mi
• Boundary Line 1889 and 1893 — 4.1 mi
• Outlaw Battle — 9.4 mi