24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Sayre, OK

Sayre is the county seat of Beckham County in western Oklahoma, sitting halfway between Oklahoma City and Amarillo on Interstate 40 and the former U.S. Route 66.

Sayre sprang up as a railroad townsite and incorporated on September 14, 1901, taking its name from Robert H. Sayre, a Pennsylvania stockholder of the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad.

Sayre beat the rival town of Erick in a June 1908 election to become Beckham County's permanent seat, and its Beckham County Courthouse, completed in 1911 and still in service, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sayre's population reached 4,809 in the 2020 census — the largest count in the city's history — spread across about 1,095 households.

Sayre has an unusually lopsided population because of the North Fork Correctional Facility, a privately run medium-security prison that opened in 1998; the 2020 census counted about 259 males for every 100 females in the city.

Sayre boomed after oil and gas were discovered nearby, jumping from 1,703 residents in 1920 to 3,157 in 1930.

Sayre's Beckham County Courthouse appeared on the big screen in 1940, when director John Ford used it in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Sayre benefited in the 1970s from development of the Panhandle-Hugoton field, the largest-volume natural gas field in the United States and the world's largest known source of helium.

Sayre is home to Southwestern Oklahoma State University's Sayre campus, founded in 1938 as Sayre Junior College and merged into SWOSU by the state legislature in 1987.

Sayre's motto is 'Main Street On Historic Route 66,' and its preserved Route 66 landmarks include the Sayre Champlin Service Station and the old Rock Island Depot, now the Shortgrass Country Museum.