Guthrie, Oklahoma
2012.12.21
In 1887, the Southern Kansas Railway (later part of the Santa Fe) established a station called Deer Creek on their line into Indian Territory. The town was later renamed for John Guthrie of Topeka, Kansas. A post office was established on April 4, 1889. On April 22, the first Land Run opened the former Unassigned Lands for homesteading. Guthrie gained 10,000 people in a single day. In August, the City Directory listed six banks, sixteen barbers, sixteen blacksmiths, seventeen carpenters, two cigar manufacturers, thirty-nine doctors, seven hardware stores, fifteen hotels, eighty-one lawyers, twenty-two lumber companies, five newspapers, nineteen pharmacists, and forty restaurants. In 1890 it became the capital of Oklahoma Territory, and in 1907 the first capital of the State of Oklahoma.
H.J. Whitley was born in Toronto in 1847. As a young man, he moved to Chicago and opened a hardware and candy store. He later became one of the most successful land developers in the United States, participating in the founding of dozens of towns as the railroads expanded into the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Texas, and California. Already in Guthrie on the day of the land run, he soon began construction on the first brick building in the territory. Whitley would be president and J.W. McNeal treasurer of the Guthrie National Trust and Loan Company. He also traveled to Washington D.C. to convince the government to establish Guthrie as the territorial capital. In 1912 the bank was renamed the First National Bank of Guthrie. The original building was replaced in 1923.
After just a few years, Whitley sold the bank, other businesses, and properties in Oklahoma Territory as he focused on California. Back in 1886, Whitley had taken his new bride on a honeymoon trip to the Los Angeles area. As the story goes, one day while out looking for property, they encountered a Chinese man with a wagon full of wood. Whitley asked the man what he was doing. “I up sunrise. Old trees fall down. Pick up wood. All time haully wood.” Whitley purchased the E.C. Hurd ranch and developed the town of Hollywood.
The F.C. Bonfils building was built in 1890, the first native-stone commercial structure in town. Frederick G. Bonfils was clever, if not ethical. He purchased a square mile of sagebrush in the Texas panhandle, named it Oklahoma City, Texas, and conned people into buying lots in what they imagined was the growing railroad town in Oklahoma Territory. After being run out of Guthrie, he operated several shady lotteries in Kansas City before moving to Colorado. There, he and Harry Tammen purchased the failing Denver Post and turned it into a powerhouse of sensationalist tabloid journalism. His estate was worth millions when he died in 1933.
The Gray Brothers Building also began construction in 1890, holding their grocery and wholesale business as well as the Bank of Indian Territory. The projection at the corner is known as an oriel window, a bay window that does not touch the ground.
NC Oklahoma