Beckham County Courthouse: On Screen with the Joads

The domed courthouse on the south side of Sayre was completed in nineteen eleven, designed in a blend of neoclassical and Renaissance Revival styles by the firm of Layton, Wemyss Smith, and Hawk. Its double dome, Doric columns, and belt courses made it one of the most distinguished public buildings in western Oklahoma. In nineteen forty, when John Ford brought his crew west to film The Grapes of Wrath, this courthouse appeared on screen as the Joad family drove through town on their way to California.

The cameo is brief, but it anchored the building in film history. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-four. Today it still serves as the active county courthouse, a working piece of Oklahoma's territorial past sitting beside a stretch of the Mother Road.