When I first heard about The Elbow, I was drawn to the fact that it was an historic area separated entirely by a large creek, although it was never considered separate from Guthrie itself. Additionally, though I didn’t expect to find that there is so much left over, I was enticed by the idea of exploring an area that had remnants of buildings left over; a modern ruin, as it were. So many ghost towns and old neighborhoods in Oklahoma have disappeared entirely or have been incorporated into newer cities and towns, so I felt that this was a fantastic opportunity.
The history behind this area proved to be quite interesting as well. The Elbow was a segregated community on the west side of Guthrie that was established in the early 1890s. The community was not necessarily set out to be segregated but rather resulted from a number of black families settling the area after it was disclaimed as homestead land. All of this happened just preceding Oklahoma’s Constitutional Convention where Oklahoma became all but a mandated segregated state…
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