Guthrie, OK History: Oklahoma Frontier Drugstore Museum

 

Inside Oklahoma Frontier Drugstore from Mezzanine
Picture by Alanna 

   

By Alanna Radle Rodriguez and Judge Rodriguez

Hello Friends!

Thank you for joining us once again as we delve into the history of this great state, we call home. Oklahoma.

If in old westerns, you’ve always marveled at the modern techniques of 19th century medicine, the Oklahoma Frontier Drugstore Museum is for you. It’s a pharmacy student’s dreams, or a patient’s nightmare, depending on how you look at it.

Since 1992, the Oklahoma Frontier Drugstore Museum, located in the Gaffney Building in Guthrie, has provided visitors with a unique view of the evolution of the Drugstore and doctoring. This museum covers both the 19th and 20th centuries and allows a distinctive view of the drugstore’s evolution in the providing of the needed services we have come to value today.
 

Inside the Drugstore Museum
Picture by Alanna

 
But the history of the Drugstore museum didn’t just start in 1992. One of the people who made the April 22, 1889 land run was Forress B. Lillie. He established one of the first drug stores in the territory. His license from the territorial board of pharmacy before statehood, was the first license issued by the state board of pharmacy. In 1890, the Gaffney building was built and housed his drugstore. At some point, the building was owned by a Mrs. Ruby Tryon, a follow lover of history, who wanted to see another museum open in Guthrie and sold it to the Pharmacy Heritage foundation. One of the Museum’s treasure artifact is the first license issued, Mr. Lillie’s.

Included in this museum, there are numerous different examples that contributors have been gathering since the 1970’s. This includes numerous medical books, tools / devices (medicines, boxes, tins, one-fix-all elixirs) that will leave you asking how we survived to the modern age of medicine we live in today.

You got somethin' that ails ya,
We got somethin' to cure ya!
Picture by Alanna

The Museum has several examples of the original soda “pop” bottles where the bottles were capped with a marble set in the opening with a string in wax, so when a person pulls the string and breaks the wax, they can hit the marble and “pop” the seal. 

 

Original "Pop" Bottles
Picture by Alanna

They even have an original soda fountain / Ice Cream Parlor display set up to show the visitors how Drug-Stores would have children of all ages, visit for their sweets as well. Quite often, the museum will have sarsaparillas and or cream soda you can buy and drink. 

 

Ice Cream! Parlor
Picture by Alanna

It even has a dentist’s office that looks more a like a medieval torture chamber somehow.

 

Enter, the Dentist Office
Picture by Alanna

In the late fall of 2006, the museum added an apothecary garden in honor of their 25th anniversary of operation.

The Drugstore Museum also takes part in the yearly Victorian Walk that Guthrie holds for Christmas.

If you get the chance to tour the Historic Downtown of Guthrie, Oklahoma, we recommend you make a stop along the path to visit this wonderful site, and revel in its historic treasures they present. If you wish to find out more about this museum, you can visit them at https://www.drugmuseum.org.

Born and raised in Edmond, Oklahoma, Alanna Radle Rodriguez is the great-great granddaughter of one of the first pioneers to settle in Indian Territory. Judge was born and raised in Little Axe, Oklahoma, the son of A.F. Veterans. Judge and Alanna love the history of the state and relish in volunteering at the 1889 Territorial Schoolhouse in Edmond. Her second published story, part of a collaborative novella titled 18 Redbud Lane, is now available. Alanna and Judge live with her parents in the Edmond area. They are currently collaborating on a historical fiction series that takes place in pre-statehood Oklahoma.

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The Phoenix of Museums: The State Capital Publishing Museum

 

The State Capital Publishing Museum, Guthrie, OKlahoma
Wikimedia Commons

By: Alanna Radle Rodriguez and Judge Rodriguez



Hello Friends!

Thank you for joining us once again as we delve into the history of this great state, we call home. Oklahoma.

Over the last couple of months, we have looked into much of the history of the land runs. This month, we look at a truly historic icon that is being reborn. The two of us met in a re-enactment group called the Guthrie Gunfighters, longer ago than I would like to admit. Most of our gunfights were either in the middle of the street or on the corner of 2nd and Harrison in Guthrie, Oklahoma. We did more shows there between the Capital Publishing Museum and the Blue Bell Saloon, than we can count, making beautiful backdrops to our trolley shootouts.

First founded in March of 1889, The “State Capital” was founded in Winfield Kansas by a Franklin Greer. Less than a month later, he moved his operations down to the newly formed town of Guthrie. On April 22nd 1889, the State Capital became the “first daily paper ever published in what is now Oklahoma”.

Originally, the paper was located in a different location, but moved to a rented space on the second floor at the current location in 1890. As the circulation of the paper grew, however, Greer rented more and more space, until finally in 1897, he purchased the entire building. Once the final top floor occupant moved out in 1900, Greer expanded his operations to the entire building, making 10,000 square feet available to the more than 100 employees the paper employed.

The Capital Publishing company remained in the building until the building burned down on an Easter Sunday in 1902. After the fire, however, Greer paid to have the building redesigned and rebuilt on the same site. With the help of subscriptions, the building was rebuilt in only 6 months, at a price tag of $50,000.

It house not only the print company, located in the basement, and was the official printing company for the territorial government, it also held a beautiful and ornate bank, and post office on the first floor. Greer branched out and sold a complete line of office, school and stationary supplies.

The designer of the new building was Belgian architect Joseph Pierre Foucart, whom had been instrumental in the design of numerous buildings in Guthrie to include, the Victor block, the Foucart building, the Gray Brothers Building, the Gaffney Building, the De Ford Building, and numerous others.

The State Capital, being the first publishing company in Oklahoma, quickly became the biggest publisher west of the Mississippi river.

In 1911, Greer sold the Oklahoma State Capital to the Guthrie Daily Leader, their primary competitor, and publishing under the name of the State Capital ceased. The building then started being used as a printing and book binding, under the name of the Co-Op Printing company. It remained for many years as the largest publisher in the State of Oklahoma for schools, churches and government.

Filing system on the first Floor, State Capital Museum
https://www.publishingmuseum.org/gallery.html
used with permission

In 1975, the Oklahoma State Historical Society purchased the building and opened the Capital Publishing Museum. They had courses where children could come in and print their own newspapers by traditional printing. The printing presses are still where they are and can be viewed by the large windows that went around the basement. The teller windows and bank vault is still there in pristine condition, and an entire wall is taken by an intricate boxed filing system. It even holds teacher's applications for teacher's jobs that the printing company printed. The museum remained in operation until it being closed in 2012 due to a failed boiler, the last straw in a long list.

Bank Teller stations on the first floor
https://www.publishingmuseum.org/gallery.html
used with permission

In 2017, a group by the name of the Guthrie Tomorrow Coalition purchased the building and are in the process of renovating it. They were open for Guthrie's Victorian Walk and welcomed hundreds of visitors for some Christmas cheer. They are gathering the funds to get the building back up to code, to reopen the museum, in all its former glory.

Part of Resume for Teacher, my own picture

 

Another part of resume for a Teacher,
my own picture

Did you know that resumes were
called warrants?
My own picture

If you would like to donate to their efforts, please feel free to contact them at: https://www.publishingmuseum.org/ or https://www.facebook.com/The-State-Capital-Publishing-Museum-356084234882900/

Thank you for joining us this month, as we explore parts of the rich history and culture of this great state. We hope you will join us next month as we look in to some of the other historic buildings in the culture and history rich city of Guthrie, Oklahoma.

Born and raised in Edmond, Oklahoma, Alanna Radle Rodriguez is the great-great granddaughter of one of the first pioneers to settle in Indian Territory. Judge was born and raised in Little Axe, Oklahoma, the son of A.F. Veterans. Judge and Alanna love the history of the state and relish in volunteering at the 1889 Territorial Schoolhouse in Edmond. Her second published story, part of a collaborative novella titled 18 Redbud Lane, is not available. Alanna and Judge live with her parents in the Edmond area. They are currently collaborating on a historical fiction series that takes place in pre-statehood Oklahoma.

Facebook.com/authorAlannaRadleRodriguez
Pinterest.com/alannaradlerodr/
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Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the First Oklahoma Land Run

By Vickie McDonough

April 22nd is the 125th anniversary of the first Oklahoma land run. It's an exciting piece of the history of my state and the theme of a book I'm currently writing called Gabriel's Atonement.

Rome, as we all know, wasn’t built in a day, but the city of Guthrie, Oklahoma, was. Or, to be more accurate, it was “built” in a few hours. On Monday morning, April 22nd, 1889, Guthrie was an unpopulated stretch of prairie land where coyote, wolf, and deer roamed freely, but before sundown, it was a town of at least ten thousand. The same was true for Oklahoma City. In the few hours after the cavalry bugles were blown indicating the start of the land run, streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken toward the formation of a municipal government. That evening, the campfires of ten thousand people flickered on the grassy slopes of the Cimarron Valley.

Map of Oklahoma Territory with the Unassigned Lands in the center

That day, nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement the in Unassigned Lands of the Oklahoma Territory. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Oklahoma Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement in other states. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, what is now the state of Oklahoma was home to nearly 40 tribes, including the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and, Apache.

By 1889, much of the free land in America had been snatched up. Americans began pressuring the U.S. government to allow white settlement in the Oklahoma Territory. On March 3, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of the Unassigned Lands for settlement, precisely at noon on April 22nd. With only seven weeks to prepare, land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of the irregular rectangle of land. By the appointed day, more than 50,000 hopefuls, sometimes referred to as Boomers, were living in tent cities on all four sides of the territory.

At 11:50 a.m. on April 22^nd, 1889, soldiers signaled the Boomers to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, cannons boomed and bugles rang out, and the race began. With the crack of hundreds of whips and yells of a myriad voices, thousands of Boomers streamed into the territory in wagons, on horseback, penny-farthing bicycle, and on foot. By nightfall, thousands of settlers had claimed town lots or the one of the many160-acre quarter sections of land. Towns like Norman, Oklahoma City, Kingfisher, and Guthrie sprang into being almost overnight. By the time Guthrie was only one month old, it had a hotel, general stores, three newspapers—and fifty saloons.

Guthrie, OK - just five days old

The pioneer spirit battled the American lust for land. The first Oklahoma land rush was plagued by greed and fraud. Many of the U.S. Marshal deputies sent in early to stake out the towns, illegally staked their own claims before the race began. Other settlers, called “Sooners," entered the territory before the legal date and time and snatched up prime land.

All total, there were five land runs for former Indian lands in Oklahoma. The government attempted to operate subsequent runs with more controls, eventually adopting a lottery system to designate claims. By 1905, white Americans owned most of the land in Indian Territory. Two years later, on November 16, 1907, the area once known as Oklahoma Territory, joined with the Indian Territory and entered the Union as the new state of Oklahoma.

Never before in the history of the West has so large a number of people been concentrated in one place in so short a time.

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and the topic of the land runs has always fascinated me. I love the scene from the movie Far and Away, where Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise ride in the land run, so it’s probably no surprise that the first book I had published was partially centered around the 1889 land rush. Sooner or Later is still available in eBook format, but next year, you'll be able to my series Land Rush Dreams, starting with Gabriel's Atonement, which releases in January, 2015.

Now that you know what Boomers and Sooners are, the next time you hear the University of Oklahoma football chant "Boomers, Sooners!" you'll understand the meaning behind it. :)

Surprise! I'll give one lucky commenter a copy of South Carolina Brides. Visit my website(address below) and sign up for my newsletter for an additional entry.

Coming July 1st: Song of the Prairie

Janie Dunn’s dream of being an opera singer suddenly fades when, at her dying cousin’s request, she flees Boston with her cousin’s newborn son to protect him from his abusive father. She moves to Kansas to live with her brother, but life takes another dire change when he is suddenly killed. Is a marriage of convenience the answer to her problems? Is Kansas far enough away from Boston that they are safe from the baby’s vengeful father?

Vickie McDonough is the best-selling author of more than 30 books and novellas. Her novels include the Texas Boardinghouse Brides series and the Pioneer Promises series and 2 books in the Texas Trails series. Her novel, Long Trail Home, won the Inspirational category of the 2012 Booksellers’ Best Awards and End of the Trail won the Oklahoma Writer's Inc Best Fiction Novel book in 2013. This fall, Vickie has three charming Christmas novellas releasing. To learn more about Vickie, visit her website: www.vickiemcdonough.com