At the old Harris Drug store in Pampa, TX, Woody Guthrie worked on and off after his family moved here from Okemah, OK.

Today, it is the site of the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center. The music venue and meeting space is dedicated to promoting Guthrie's music and ideals, and it has a number of photos and artifacts from the American songwriter.

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The name of the building was the Hanover House or the Hanover Hotel, and it was located at 101 West 43rd Street on the northwest corner of 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue (now called Avenue of the Americas). Currently, it is the International Center for Photography.

This blogger does a great job analyzing the different views Guthrie would have had out his window as he wrote his most famous song.

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In May of 1911, a posse was formed to investigate a stolen cow near Okemah, OK. The posse went to the Nelson family farm, and in the ensuing confusion a deputy was shot in the stomach and bled to death.

The father pleaded guilty to larceny and was sent to the state prison in McAlester. However, the mother, Laura Nelson, and her son, L.D. Nelson, were sent to the Okemah County Jail.

The two were kept there until late in the evening on May 24, 1911, when a lynch mob kidnapped them and hung them over the North Canadian River (from a different bridge, but probably at this same location). Several photographs were taken to be made into postcards- a common tactic of the day. These were the only photographs made of a female lynching victim in that era.

Woody Guthrie wrote many songs that reflect on this incident near his home town: "Don't Kill My Baby and My Son," "Slipknot," and "High Balladree."

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Managed by Woody's daughter, Nora Guthrie, the Woody Guthrie Foundation and the Woody Guthrie Archives house the largest collection of Guthrie material in the world.

Researchers can apply to access the handwritten lyrics, notebooks, photographs, drawings, recordings, correspondence, manuscripts and much more. Billy Bragg used the Archives to research the material for the Mermaid Avenue project.

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Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967 while at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York. Guthrie had long suffered from the genetic neurological malady known as Huntington's disease. He was 55 years old.

Upon cremation, Guthrie's ashes were sprinkled into the waters off the Coney Island shore.

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