Chandler's Territorial Homes: Rebuilt After the Tornado

Chandler, Oklahoma sat on the Lincoln County prairie as a young Territory town when a tornado struck on March thirtieth, eighteen ninety-seven. Fourteen people were killed and most of the town was destroyed. The community rebuilt in brick and stone, and the homes and commercial buildings that went up in the years immediately after the storm became what historians call the Territorial Homes of Chandler.

Several houses from that pre-statehood era are still pointed to as Chandler's Territorial Homes. Route Sixty-Six came through in nineteen twenty-six, adding another chapter. Today Chandler preserves both its Territorial-era architecture and its Route Sixty-Six heritage as two distinct layers of a town that refused to disappear.