Driving through Guymon, Oklahoma

Guymon is a city and county seat of Texas County, Oklahoma, in the Oklahoma Panhandle. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 11,442, an increase of 6.5 percent from 10,472 in 2000, and represents more than half of the population of the county. Cattle feedlots, corporate pork farms, and natural gas dominate its economy, with wind energy production and transmission recently diversifying landowners' farms.
n the 1890s, Edward T. "E.T." Guymon, president of the Inter-State Land and Town Company, purchased a section of land west of the Beaver River, also known as the North Canadian River. The site grew very rapidly after the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway (Rock Island) built a line from Liberal, Kansas to Texhoma, Texas in 1901. A community, first named Sanford by the U.S. Post Office Department, was situated along the line. It was renamed Guymon a month later by postal officials to avoid confusion with the town of Stratford, Texas, which was further down the line. Guymon incorporated in 1901. The town plat was filed in Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory, in 1904.

Guymon's growth was helped when most of the businesses moved there from the nearby town of Hardesty. One of these was the newspaper, Hardesty Herald, which owner Richard B. Quinn quickly renamed as the Guymon Herald. When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Guymon claimed 839 residents, and was named county seat of the newly created Texas County. By the 1910 U.S. census, the town had 1,342 residents. It also had three banks, three hotels, four doctors, a flour mill, a grain company and several retail establishments. A second newspaper, the Guymon Democrat, was in business. Agriculture became the basis of Guymon's economy. The 1920 census recorded 1,507 residents, which grew to 2,181 in 1930. By 1932, the town had two cream stations and five grain elevators.
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s had a negative effect on Guymon. Some old-time residents remember "Black Sunday", April 14, 1935, as the day of the worst dust storm in the area's history. However, discovery of the nearby Hugoton-Panhandle gas field created many new jobs, and brought Guymon's population to 2,290 in 1940.

The Guymon Pioneer Days Rodeo has offered tributes to the community's pioneer spirit every May since 1933. In 2014 the rodeo was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). In 2006, the rodeo had over 900 contestants with over $385,000 in prize money.