Carnegie, OK

Carnegie sits on the south bank of the Washita River in western Caddo County, where State Highways 9 and 58 meet about 27 miles west of Anadarko. Early settlement spread across both sides of the river under the name Latham; the post office was established in 1901, and the town took the name Carnegie in honor of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Agriculture gave the town its long economic base, from cotton and wheat to broomcorn, cattle, hogs, and poultry.

The Liberty Theatre gives downtown Carnegie an unusually long-running local institution. It opened in 1917 for live performances, showed its first movie in 1919, expanded to three screens in 1995, and reopened after the pandemic closure in 2021. A 2025 projection upgrade brought 4K laser picture and Dolby sound, but the original Theatre No. 1 and its orchestra pit remain part of the building's story. Carnegie's map is still river, farm country, highway, and Main Street theater: a southwestern Oklahoma town whose past is carried by both agriculture and a movie house that kept changing with the times.