Sayre, Oklahoma: County Seat on the Mother Road

Sayre was founded in nineteen oh one and named for Robert Heysham Sayre, the chief engineer and a stockholder in the railroad that made the town possible. When Oklahoma achieved statehood in nineteen oh seven, Beckham County was carved from surrounding territory and Sayre was chosen as its seat. Route sixty-six arrived through Beckham County in nineteen twenty-eight and brought steady traffic through the downtown.

In nineteen forty, John Ford's film crew used Sayre as a backdrop while shooting The Grapes of Wrath. The Joad family's westbound journey along sixty-six passed through here on screen, with the town's nineteen eleven courthouse visible in one scene. That courthouse still stands two blocks off the main road.

Today Sayre is a quiet western Oklahoma ranching town of nearly five thousand people, holding on to its place along a highway that once carried a nation's hopes west.