First State Capitol District

Guthrie's First State Capitol District preserves the streets and buildings associated with Oklahoma's territorial government and earliest years of statehood. Guthrie became the territorial capital after the 1889 Land Run and remained the seat of government when Oklahoma entered the Union in 1907. The city's political importance ended abruptly in 1910 when the state capital moved to Oklahoma City. That shift helped freeze much of Guthrie's downtown architecture in an earlier era, leaving an unusually dense concentration of Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings. The district is best explored on foot. Former government offices, banks, hotels, fraternal buildings and commercial blocks create a streetscape that still resembles the period when politicians, lawyers and businessmen crowded the city. The Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library provide essential context nearby. Guthrie's value is not one surviving capitol building, but the overall urban fabric of a city that once expected to remain Oklahoma's permanent political center.