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"Like the rush for Oklahoma land, the discovery of oil attracted
both men and capital from far and near, these pioneers in petroleum development were as rugged and self-sufficient as those
who settled the land ... Oklahoma's two greatest industries, agriculture and petroleum, have developed largely hand in hand,
and back of both developments are the pioneers, men of restless energy and unbounded faith."
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Bartlesville is notable
for being the longtime home of Phillips Petroleum Company (now merged with Conoco
as ConocoPhillips. Frank Phillips, who has a principal street named after him (the hospital is named after his wife
Jane), founded Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville in 1905 when the area was still
Indian Territory. Phillips has always been the top employer.
In spite
of its proximity to Tulsa, Bartlesville has a daily newspaper, the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise. Residents of the city are referred to as Bartians.
Bartlesville is one of two places in Oklahoma where a Lenape tribe lives, the other being Anadarko.
The Price
Tower is a skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Bartlesville, Oklahoma . The 19 story, 221 foot tower was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company. It was completed in 1956.
It is the only skyscraper designed by Wright which was actually built, and is one of only two vertically oriented Wright structures
extant. (The other being the S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower.
Wright called the Price Tower, which was built on the Oklahoma prairie, "the tree that escaped the crowded forest".
Wright was not merely referring to the building's height, but also to its design. The Price Tower is supported by a central
core which is anchored in place by a deep central foundation, as a tree is by its taproot. The floors of the building are
cantilevered from this central core, like the branches of a tree. The lightweight outer walls hang from the floors like leaves
hang from a tree's branches. Wright had championed these design ideas, which other architects had put to use before the construction
of the Price Tower as early as the 1920s. Indeed the design of the Price Tower was based on a previous Wright design for St. Marks in the Bowery, in New York City. Fra nk Phillips's home in Bartlesville is now a
house museum that is maintained by the Oklahoma Historical Society. His ranch, Woolaroc, about 10 miles south-east of Bartlesville contains a museum of his art collection,
and is also a big-game preserve with many native and exotic animals such as American Bison, Elk, and Zebra.
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Woolaroc Museum might be called the Little Smithsonian of the West. It showcases paintings, sculptures, cultures, and
artifacts, that begin with man's first appearance in the New World, and culminate in the bright drama of wild west adventures. Woolaroc also features a Wildlife Preserve. A two mile drive from the front entrance will
take you through the tallgrass clearings and sandstone ledges that are the home for a variety of wildliife, including deer,
elk, longhorn cattle, and one of Oklahoma's largest privately owned buffalo herds.
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In 1859, Lewis Ross, a brother of Chief John Ross of
the Cherokees, found a pocket of oil that produced about ten barrels a day for nearly a year. Ross found oil instead and the
news spread of this potential source of tribal revenue.
According to the constitutions of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations at that time, the land was held in common by
the Indian citizens of the nations, but the individual citizens could lease out a limited amount of land. The Lewis Ross find
was quickly depleted, but it proved that there was oil to be found in the Indian Territory.
By 1875, Jacob H. Bartles, another pioneer and adopted
Delaware Indian, was operating a trading post on the Caney River in the Cherokee Nation. Bartles employed two ambitious young
men, George B. Keeler and William Johnstone. They too were adopted members of the Osage and Delaware tribes, respectively.
Within a few years, Keeler and Johnstone started their own competing general store on the other side of the Caney River, in
what became Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
The new venture's search for oil began in earnest when they hired the well-known firm of "McBride and Bloom" from
Independence, Kansas. Albert P. McBride and Camden L. Bloom had drilled Kansas' first commercially successful well, Norman
No.1, in what would come to be known as the Mid-Continent Field, before they ranged into the Indian Territory.
In December 1896, McBride and Bloom abandoned a 1,750
foot dry hole near Red Fork (today part of Tulsa) to drill a new well for Cudahy Oil Co. It took threeweeks of hauling equipment,
tools, pipe and other materials 70-miles northward across the freezing Arkansas River to the new Keeler and Johnstone site
on Spencer Creek of the Caney River. Drilling began in January 1897, the same month that Bartlesville was incorporated with
a population of about 200 people. Four months later, at 1,320 feet, the Nellie Johnstone No.1 well (named for partner William
Johnstone’s six year-old daughter), showed for oil.
"Shooting" had been used since the 1859 Drake well in Pennsylvania
to stimulate production, so G. M. Perry, an expert shooter, was brought in. Perry had been McBride and Bloom's shooter for
the successful Norman No.1 well in Kansas. At 3 p.m., George Keeler's stepdaughter, Miss Jenni Cass, dropped the "go devil"
detonating device down the well bore to set off the waiting nitroglycerin.
The explosion caused Nellie Johnstone No.1 to blow in
as a gusher, producing from 50 to 75 barrels of oil a day. Despite the production, the Cudahy Oil Co. was confronted with
the same problem Edward Byrd had faced seven years earlier: more crude oil than the local market could consume. With no storage
tanks, pipelines, or railroads available, the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 was capped for two years.
The pipeline Nellie Johnstone No.1, became commercially
profitable in May 1900 with the initial shipment of oil at a price of $1.25 per barrel, less 25-cents for handling. As the discovery well
for the giant Bartlesville-Dewey Field, the Nellie Johnstone No.1 ushered in the oil era for Oklahoma Territory. It produced
more than 100,000 barrels of oil in its lifetime. In the ten years following the Nellie Johnstone discovery, Bartlesville's
population grew from 200 to over 4,000 while Oklahoma's oil production grew from 1,000 barrels to over 43 million barrels
annually.
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