Wondering About Woody's Wanderings: A Visit to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa Oklahoma
Wondering About Woody's Wanderings: A Visit to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
Do you remember the song “This Land Is Your Land”?
It always takes me back to elementary school. One of my teachers was an avid Woody Guthrie fan, and he would regularly bring his guitar to class and sing the song with us. Despite that early exposure, I realized, while Fish and I were downtown the other day, that I knew surprisingly little about the man himself until visiting the Woody Guthrie Center.
The visit begins with a short biographical film, followed by a self-guided walk through Guthrie’s life. And what a life it was.
Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, a small town about an hour southwest of Tulsa and an hour east of Oklahoma City. The land itself carries layered histories: once Quapaw and Osage, it was relinquished to the U.S. government in 1825, reassigned to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in 1830, and finally opened to non-Native settlement in 1902. Woody’s father, Charles Guthrie, became one of the area’s larger non-Native landowners during that period.
But Okemah was far from idyllic. Woody’s mother, Nora, suffered from Huntington’s disease and, after multiple house fires, one of which killed his sister Clara, was institutionalized. After a series of failed investments, his father left Oklahoma for Texas. By fourteen, Woody was largely on his own, busking on the streets of Okemah and beginning the long process of turning lived hardship into song.
Though he eventually rejoined his father in Texas, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression pushed Woody onto the road. He traveled largely by freight train, moving as a hobo, and those journeys became the raw material for his music. Guthrie was a storyteller first and foremost, chronicling the broke, the hungry, the displaced, and the overlooked.
He was also astonishingly prolific. In addition to writing more than 3,000 songs, he authored books such as Bound for Glory and Born to Win during his lifetime. Others, including House of Earth, were discovered in his papers and published posthumously. He also produced hundreds of drawings, many of which appear etched into metal panels throughout the center.
The museum houses an extensive collection of his manuscripts, instruments, and artwork. Everywhere you turn, his handwriting and illustrations surround you, reinforcing the sense that Guthrie was always working, always observing, always recording.
I left deeply inspired by his life. Long before it was common, Guthrie crossed racial lines in his collaborations and insisted on equal pay for all musicians he played with. He never sought commercial success. His travels weren’t career moves; they were storytelling journeys. He wanted to bear witness.
In addition to its permanent exhibits, the center hosts rotating exhibitions exploring music’s influence on social change. We visited at the tail end of Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom, an exhibition tracing American protest music from the Revolutionary era through modern genres. It was a powerful reminder of how music shapes and is shaped by a country's moral imagination.
The center is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 to 6, with admission priced at $12. There’s an excellent gift shop stocked with Woody memorabilia, and researchers can request access to the archives. At the time of our visit, masks were required to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Some places teach you history.
Others remind you what it’s for.
xoxo,
a.d. elliott
About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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