The Lunch Box Journals

Topeka, KS, to Bartlesville, OK

Drizzle and clouds envelope the Lunch Box as it heads south towards Oklahoma.

A break in the drizzle finds us in Sedan, KS, founded in 1871 and the county seat of Chautauqua County. Today a struggling small town of around 1,100 people, Sedan clearly saw better times in the early 1900’s.

The 1896 Grand Opera House still stands, part of it housing a small museum honoring Emmett Kelly, a famous circus clown who was born in Sedan.

Heading into northeastern Oklahoma the rain resumes, masking a landscape of rolling forests and green pastures as we approach Bartlesville.

Bartlesville, OK
The lucrative fur trade in the area of the Cherokee, Delaware Osage tribes of what is now northeastern Oklahoma is what drew the first white men to settle in the area in the early 1870’s. Nelson Carr built a gristmill on the north bank of the Caney River in 1870. In 1875 Jacob Bartles bought the gristmill and opened a general store, rooming house, blacksmith shop and a livery stable. Other settlers moved to the area and it became known as Bartles Town. By the early 1880’s Bartles provided electricity, a telephone system and a water distribution system to his town. Competitors built a store on the south side of the river in 1884 and when the railroad came in 1899 it established its’ depot on the south side of the river. Bartles moved his store a few miles north and founded the town of Dewey, but his name remained associated with the settlement on the south side of the Caney River and it became Bartlesville. The seminal event in the history of Bartlesville occurred on March 25, 1897, when the Cudahy Oil Company drilled its’ first oil well on the south bank of the river. Nellie Johnstone No. 1 blew and the oil rush was on! This reproduction of the Nellie Johnstone sits on the exact spot where oil was found that day, on the banks of the Caney River just a few blocks north of the business center of current Bartlesville. The 82-foot tall derrick was made of wood, this exact replica was built in 2008.

A 1903 photograph of Bartlesville shows the forest of oil derricks in the midst of the town.

The town, viewed from essentially the same spot, looks considerably different today.

The picture of the current city creates a bit of mystery. How does a small city of around 35,000 people in remote northeastern Oklahoma generate the need for such a substantial city center? That leads us to “Uncle Frank”.

Uncle Frank
Frank Phillips was born in 1873 in rural Nebraska on his parents’ homestead. The farm was not successful and the Phillips abandoned their farm in 1875 and returned to Iowa. When he was 14 Frank learned how to be a barber and soon was the owner of the only barbershop in town. He married Jane Gibson, daughter of a successful banker in Creston, IA, and became involved in the banking business. In 1903 he and his father-in-law came by train to Indian Territory to assess business opportunities and excited by what he found, Frank convinced his brother L.E. to join him in investing in banking and oil in Bartlesville. Their initial oil endeavors were not successful so in 1905 the Phillips brothers opened the Citizens Bank and Trust Company in Bartlesville. They quickly became successful, buying up the other banks in town. The Phillips brothers continued to invest in oil ventures and on September 6, 1905, on land owned by an eight year old Delaware Indian girl, Anna Anderson, they struck oil. Under tribal regulations Anna had been allocated the 80-acre tract that guardians leased on her behalf to the Phillips. Anna became known as the “richest little girl in Oklahoma.” This was the first of a string of 81 consecutive wells that hit oil for the Phillips brothers and their success continued as well in other businesses related to the oil boom to the point that in 1917 they incorporated as the Phillips Petroleum Company. The company needed an identifying emblem and many ideas were considered, amongst them was the idea of using “66” since at that time Highway 66 through Tulsa was the main highway between California and the East Coast. It was initially discarded but company lore recalls the following conversation happening during a test drive using the new Phillips gasoline: “This car goes like sixty on our new gas”, the company official remarked. “Sixty, nothing”, exclaimed the driver, glancing at the speedometer, “we’re doing 66!” The experience was recounted at a meeting and someone happened to ask where the incident took place. The reply was: “On Highway 66, near Tulsa”. The decision was made then and there to call the company Phillips 66. The rest is history. And, oh yeah, all those big buildings in downtown Bartlesville, virtually all of them house company offices for the multi-national that is now Phillips 66, Conoco Phillips, and/or assorted related businesses. There really is little else in the city center.  By far the majority of retail and service business are about two miles east across the river along the Hwy 75 strip.

Nestled amongst the towers is the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum.

A place of honor is reserved for a section of the actual pipe from the Anna Anderson No.1.

The history of the company is explained in great detail in a maze of galleries as seen from above.

During the history of the company only four logos represented the business.

A Philipps 66 research facility was one of a number of auxiliary Phillips businesses in Bartlesville. Phillips researchers have been responsible for many of the advances in the use of petroleum products over the years. One of their early inventions was a resin, Marlex, the genesis for a generation of plastic products. Initial demand for the product, introduced in the mid-1950’s, was not strong until almost overnight demand soared. Turns out that the original “Hula Hoop” was the product the popularized the use of Marlex!

Other products soon followed.

One of those related businesses in Bartlesville back in the 1950’s was the H.C. Price Company, a pipeline construction and pipe coating firm. By the early 1950’s it had become an international concern and the owner decided to build an office building in Bartlesville. Frank Lloyd Wright won the contract and now the Price Tower in Bartlesville is the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed tower ever built. A model is on display in the second floor museum in the tower.

The tree is the metaphor that Wright used to describe his tower. The building opened in 1956 with the 19 stories in the shape of a pin-wheel around a central “trunk” of four elevators as a combination of apartments and offices. Today a boutique hotel occupies part of the building, apartments and offices the rest. The green bands and accents on the exterior are weathered copper.

The entry foyer is unassuming, just a place for the elevator doors and the entrance to the hotel. Floors throughout are stained concrete. The hotel lobby features a bench backed by a stunning copper feature.

Off the lobby is a small, multi-level art museum, currently featuring a show of female artists as well as a collection of furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The elevators are an odd geometric shape and are really small, this picture shows just me standing in one. More than two people who would be hard pressed to fit in!

A Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper is an unexpected surprise in Bartlesville. Across the street is another Bartlesville architectural gem, the Bartlesville Community Center. Designed by William Wesley Peters, former chief architect at Taliesin West-Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the center is a performance hall with 1,700 seats.

Just a couple of blocks south of the city center on Cherokee Street the extended Phillips family eventually occupied three homes. Construction of Frank and Jane Phillips’ house began in 1909 and was finished the following year. An imposing home, a photograph from the early 1920’s shows how it dominated the other homes in the neighborhood.

The home remained in the Phillips family until Frank and Jane’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Irwin, donated the home and contents to the local historical society upon her death in 1973. When Elizabeth moved into the home most of the original furnishings were put into storage and she used her own things. The original furnishings were taken out of storage and today the home looks much like it did during prior to the death of Jane in 1948. The 28-room house sits on a large corner lot, the carriage house in the back had garages on the ground floor and servants quarters on the second.

A very interesting tour of the house reveals all the details, unfortunately photography of the interior is not allowed. I took this picture of the dining room off their website so you can see an example of the quality of the finishes that are consistent throughout the house.

Across the street to the south is the house where Frank’s brother L.E. lived and across the street to the east is the home that Frank built for his only son John.

Frank and Jane Phillips were benefactors to many organizations in Bartlesville and became affectionately known as “Uncle Frank” and “Aunt Jane” to their employees and friends. While the Bartlesville home was an elegant home, Frank truly loved his much more rustic ranch set in the densely forested Osage Hills southwest of Bartlesville.

Woolaroc
Frank Phillips had assembled land holdings in the Osage Hills southwest of Bartlesville that eventually totaled around 17,000 acres. In 1925 he set aside the most picturesque and rugged portion of his land as a 3,600 ranch that became known as Woolaroc. A collection of domestic and exotic animals from around the world were brought in to populate the ranch, which was enclosed with ten miles of a five-foot-high woven wire fence topped with five strands of barbed wire. Today remnants of those animals (emu, zebra, ostrich, llamas, water buffalo, sheep, elk, deer, longhorn cattle, and buffalo) still roam the ranch, some in the wild and some in pens. The main complex of buildings is nestled on top of a hill above Clyde Lake about two miles from the highway. The road on the way to the building complex weaves in and out of the trees and fences, periodically various animals come into view.

The ostrich are in a pen next to a lone zebra laying in the grass (barely visible in the picture on the upper right).

Water buffalo lounge amongst the trees.

The visitor and heritage center is the first of the three main buildings that we will visit.

The entry doors are flanked by an auditorium on the right that plays informational films, on the left is a structure that resembles a church which houses a collection of paintings by Robert Lindnuex, an American artist who chronicled the last years of the West well into the 20th Century. The two story hall contains seating for tourists on the first floor in front of a magnificent two story stained glass window, the second floor balconies display a large collection of Lindnuex’s portraits of significant people in the 19th Century West.

A viewing tower above the center gives amazing views across the Osage Hills.

One of the first structures built on the ranch was the Lodge, made of pine logs hauled in from Arkansas and Missouri. The first stage was a large cabin, built to resemble the Nebraska cabin in which Mr. Phillips was born. The main structure (on the right), with a great room measuring twenty-eight by fifty-two feet, was added in 1926-1927. Only the large great room and original cabin area are open to visitors, the bedrooms are on the second floor. The newly remodeled lodge perched above Clyde Lake in this photograph from 1929.

Today not much has changed.

Uncle Frank was not a hunter, all of the animal trophies and skins on display were not killed but preserved after dying of natural causes. The great room is where guests were entertained. The second floor balcony is the first sight as one enters through the front door, then glances left and right reveal the imposing room.

Through a passageway the original cabin was converted to a dining hall and kitchen.

The view from the front porch looks down on Clyde Lake.

Up the hill across from the visitors center is the museum. Originally an airplane hanger, it was remodeled in 1947 to house Frank Phillips’ collection of western art and memorabilia.

Only the right half of the building and a lower floor are open to the public. The double doors open onto a magnificent rotunda whose only contents are a statue of Frank Phillips centered between two bronze statues.

To the right is the first of five galleries that run along the south wall: The Dawn of History, Land of Forgotten Cities, Indian Territory, The Trail of the Cowboy, and the Cavalcade of History. Archaeological artifacts from the ancient cultures that inhabited Oklahoma are featured in this first gallery, including a model depiction of a temple and portion of a village excavated near present day Spiro, Oklahoma. The model was built in 1940 on a scale of one-half inch to the foot by the University of Oklahoma Anthropology Department.

Standing in front of the model and looking east one gets a view through the succeeding galleries through to the far wall.

A mixt of artifacts and artwork make up the collection in each gallery.

A centerpiece of the “Trail of the Cowboy” gallery is a pedestal housing six original Charlie Russel bronzes, including the “Buffalo Hunter” in the foreground right.

The rear gallery, “Cavalcade of History: highlights the role of women in the West and features an amazing collection of bronzes featuring women of the west in their various roles.

That completes the line of galleries along the south wall, turning left along the east wall are two more galleries, the “Grandeur of the West” and the “Woolaroc Airplane.” Grandeur of the West features a massive wall tapestry made to be shown at the San Francisco Exposition of 1915. It is a copy of the mural in the US Capitol, “Westward Ho”, commissioned in 1863 by President Lincoln. The tapestry took two and a half years to be complete and measures nine feet by eighteen feet, half the size of the original painting.

The last gallery on the main floor features the “Woolaroc”, the airplane that represented Phillips 66 in the famous Dole Pineapple air race in 1927 where James D. Dole, president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, offered $35,000 in prizes for the first two flights to Hawaii from the mainland. Phillips Petroleum had been working on a new aviation fuel and Frank Phillips knew that winning the race would successfully help market the new gasoline. On August 16, 1927, eight planes took to the runway. Several crashed on take-off, others disappeared over the ocean, and only two finished the race. The Woolaroc won, finishing in what was then the astonishing time of 26 hours, 17 minutes, and 33 seconds.

The two main galleries on the ground floor are equally impressive. The first is the Colt Firearms gallery, housing perhaps the world’s most comprehensive collection of Colt firearms. The collection was gathered primarily by Philip R. Philips, nephew of Frank. Samuel Colt’s first firearms business was not named “Colt” but rather was the “Patent Arms Manufacturing Company” of Patterson, New Jersey. The collection features a group of rare “pocket pistols” manufactured there in 1837-1838. Approximately 500 were manufactured, no two exactly the same as the smaller size required more handwork.

Patent Arms Manufacturing went bankrupt and a few years later Mr. Colt returned to the arms business by creating the Colt Patent Firearms Company in Hartford, Connecticut. This venture turned out to be considerably more profitable. This new factory was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, exploiting the idea of the assembly line by using interchangeable parts. The collection is huge, standing at the entrance to room I take pictures to my left and right.

The last gallery explains the life story of “Uncle Frank” (as he was known by employees and friends around Bartlesville) from his early years as a successful barber to oil tycoon.

Here, too, the mystery of the word “Woolaroc” is revealed. A business associate, Ms. Sydney Fern Butler, is credited with creating the name by using the first letters from the principal elements on the ranch – Woods, Lakes, and Rocks.

Leaving the complex the road weaves down and around the hills of Woolaroc. Set into the side of a hill across a peaceful valley facing the Lodge is the final resting place of Frank and Jane Phillips.

As I make my way back to the highway peaceful views unfold on either side of the road.

The last nod to the heritage of Frank Phillips on Woolaroc is a copy of the iconic Phillips 66 gas stations that dotted the United States in the early part of the twentieth century.

Our path now turns southwest, travelling through “Green Country”, the nickname given to eastern Oklahoma. Rather than the stereotypical image of endless waving grass, the eastern half of Oklahoma is densely forested rolling hills, interspersed with stretches of cleared farmland.

I skirt the metropolitan Tulsa area as my path takes me further southwest to Oklahoma City.

The land appears to be endless green waves as we approach the northeastern suburbs of Oklahoma City.

Next up:  The “OKC!”