Carnegie Library

Historical marker location:

406 East Oklahoma Avenue, Guthrie, Oklahoma

( Marker is on East Oklahoma Avenue east of North Ash Street, on the left when traveling east.)

Marker installed: 1980

Constructed in 1902 with a $25,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie, this restored building is now connected to the Oklahoma Territorial Museum. The last territorial governor and the first state governor took their oaths of office here. The mock wedding symbolizing the joining of Oklahoma and Indian Territory as the state of Oklahoma took place on the library steps on November 16, 1907.

Oklahoma was originally home to many Native American tribes, including the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. These tribes were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States during the 1830s and 1840s in a tragic event known as the Trail of Tears.