Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library

Oklahoma Territory lasted seventeen years, and Guthrie was its capital. The town was laid out in the run of April 22, 1889, when the Unassigned Lands, held by the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations before the Civil War, opened at noon. No townsite could exceed 320 acres, so four towns grew up, Guthrie, East Guthrie, West Guthrie and Capital Hill, each with its own mayor, and they consolidated in the summer of 1890, after the Organic Act made Guthrie the territorial capital. Delegates wrote the state constitution in City Hall beginning November 20, 1906, and Guthrie stayed the capital until a vote on June 11, 1910 moved it to Oklahoma City.

The Carnegie Library was built in 1902 with a Carnegie grant, and on November 16, 1907 the statehood ceremonies were held on its steps. In 1972 the city announced plans to tear it down. Fred Pfeiffer led the effort to save it by adding a museum on the next lot, which opened on November 16, 1973, and the two buildings are now joined as one museum preserved by the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Its artifacts, photographs and paintings follow the territorial years: soddies and dugouts on new claims, a run too late in the season for a cash crop, drought and depression until good harvests in 1897, and the merchants, tradesmen, saloon keepers and gamblers who filled the new towns. Around it is the Guthrie Historic District, a National Historic Landmark since 1999, known for the Gothic buildings of the architect Joseph Foucart.