to
Update
is a city in and the county seat of Logan County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City Metroplex. The population was 9,925 at the 2000 census.
Guthrie was the territorial and later the first state capital for Oklahoma. Guthrie is nationally significant because of its outstanding collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century commercial architecture. The Guthrie Historic District has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Victorian architecture provides a unique backdrop for Wild West and territorial-style entertainment, carriage tours, replica trolley cars, specialty shops, and art galleries. The Masonic Temple is the world's largest conservatory.
At noon on April 22, 1889, cannons resounded at a 2-million acre (8,000 km²) section of Indian Territory, launching president Benjamin Harrison's "Hoss Race" or Land Run of 1889. During the next six hours, about 10,000 people settled in what became the capital of the new Territory of Oklahoma: Guthrie. Within months, Guthrie became a modern brick and stone "Queen of the Prairie" with municipal water, electricity, a mass transit system, and underground parking garages for horses and carriages. Hobart Johnstone Whitley, also known as HJ and the Father of Hollywood, built the first brick block building in the territory for the National Loan & Trust Company. He was asked by the local people to be the first Governor of Oklahoma. Whitley traveled to Washington, D.C. where he persuaded the U.S. Congress to allow Guthrie to be the new capital of the state of Oklahoma. By 1907, when Guthrie became the capital, it looked as if it had been established for longer, like a city of the east coast.
Statehood, however, meant that political control moved from the national level to state government. Without the protective arm of the federal government. three years later Guthrie fought and lost its battle to retain the capital. In the middle of the night, on June 11, 1910, the state seal was moved to Oklahoma City, and along with it, Guthrie's entire economic base. Guthrie soon slipped into an economic sleep lasting seventy years.
Guthrie prospered briefly as the administrative center of the territory, but was eclipsed in economic influence by Oklahoma City early in the 20th century. Oklahoma City had managed to become a major junction for several railroads and had attracted a major industry in the form of meat packing. A successful campaign was started by Oklahoma City business leaders after statehood to make Oklahoma City the new state capital, and it was moved in 1910. As a result of the sudden loss of its administrative function, Guthrie began to dwindle in size and soon lost its status as Oklahoma's second city, first to Muskogee, then later to Tulsa.
Guthrie was named for John Guthrie of Topeka, a Kansas jurist. Guthrie post office was established April 4, 1889.
Guthrie was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1999.