Red Fork began as a cattle grazing area for herds waiting to cross the Arkansas River at the shallow places in the bend of the river. When the railroad pushed across the river in 1883 the railhead stopped at the south side of the Red Fork Hill. Surveyors and railroad workers on the project were in need of supplies. Monroe and H. C. Hall opened a store in Red Fork and other businesses followed.[1]
Indian Territory was impacted by discovery of oil in 1897.
On Thursday, April 15, 1897, the first commercial oil well, the Nellie Johnstone Number 1, was brought in on the outskirts of Bartlesville. Even though this was the first strike in the territory, it did not have the impact that the Red Fork strike had a few years later.
On Tuesday, June 25, 1901, at 3:00 p.m., the Sue Bland #1 well came in. It was only 600 feet deep and produced around 10 barrels of crude oil a day, but it brought oilmen swarming into the area from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. The oil field at Red Fork was on the west side of the river; Tulsa was on the east. Oilmen from Tulsa had to cross the river every day to get to the fields.
With the well, came growth, controversy, excitement and bitter feelings. Depending on which version of story told, you get a different feeling about the players and events. The important thing to remember about the Sue Bland strike was that it was a continuation of the pursuit for riches and accomplishment in the development of the United States. The strike divided some people and provided a home for many others.
In the center of the controversy were several influential individuals, those daring to drill in the Red Fork area, those looking for credit, a few who despised the large eastern oil companies and many who sought homes and work in the frontier land.
One version of the strike at Red Fork is told by Dr. Clinton, a resident of the area and entrepreneur who spent many years in the area.
From the “Chronicles of Oklahoma” Dr. Fred Clinton’s story about the First Oil and Gas Well in Tulsa County.
“In 1901, a group of persons were endeavoring to secure a large oil and gas lease in the Creek Nation, extending north to the Arkansas River, and have it approved by the Secretary of the Interior before allotments were completed. Citizens of the Creek Nation had enough carpetbagger rule and did not want an absentee landlord substituted. This problem had to be met at once. Here, we Creek citizens applied a new technique in oil pioneering development. Finding the oil and giving it nationwide publicity. No honest and qualified Secretary of the Interior would cloud the land title of an allottee by approving a lease on it without the authority of law. If these parties seeking large holdings had not wasted their time trying to claim the Red Fork well as their lease and had drilled southeast of Sapulpa, as first planned, they could have hit the Glenn Pool sand, and the story would have been different.
We citizens at Red Fork were always on the alert for some industry to aid in the development of this section and the coming state. One fine May morning Dr. J. C. W. Bland sent for me for a consultation at Red Fork about a 500,000 acre oil and gas lease said to have been passed by the Creek Council, at Okmulgee, subject to the approval by the Secretary of the Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock. Doctor Bland and I did not have any ready money, so I reminded him of a thing he well knew. We were doctors and not oilmen.
Many Persons planned to drill for oil, and some had drilled wells in the hope of securing large approved oil leases in the Indian Territory. As these brought in no worthwhile returns to the Creek Nation or to citizens of the Nation, we decided on a rational development for community and state, with oil as the magic lure when we found and publicized it. It was my suggestion to Doctor Bland that we proceed immediately to initiate the oil development on the Sue A. Bland homestead Adjoining Red Fork, and if we struck oil to give it the widest publicity; this would attract oil people and insure development. I told Doctor Bland that if he could get his wife’s consent to unload equipment and commence drilling immediately, I would agree to raise the money to pay freight and demurrage and get everything going until we both could arrange for the completion of the well. Doctor Bland attended to both assignments. Before returning to Tulsa, I went to H.H. Adams, Frisco Agent at Red Fork (1897-1902), and borrowed $300, which was enough to free the equipment and to get the drilling started.
The land allotments to enrolled citizens in the Creek Nation were progressing rapidly. We Creek citizens were giving up our free range and our privileges of selecting any place on the public domain, establishing a home or business there. We were being confined to the 160 acre allotment established by the recent agreement with Government, so our minds turned to the immediate future. We must develop industry to take the place of cattle and other live stock. Stock raising was still carried on in a big way by a few large stockmen. This produced more and finer stock in smaller quantities but more widely distributed over the territory.
Everything worked out very well at Red Fork; drilling was slow but continued. Good food and drinking water were difficult to secure and very expensive. The only public eating-places were temporary tents put up and run by fellows who followed the booms to reap what ready cash they could. Colonel Robinson’s Hotel was the only hotel in Red Fork at that time. Many persons arriving with no place to stay were entertained in private homes. As I recollect, Dr. F. B. Fite, Chief Pleasant Porter and J. H. Hill, all of Muskogee, were entertained in the Clinton home at Red Fork. Mrs. Vera Bland Stickles told me that Mr. Crossman and the other drillers frequently ate with them during the drilling period.
Dr. Bland paid the drillers considerable money and gave them blocks of land inside the townsite adjoining the Sue A. Bland allotment. This was the only land then available that could be sold and drilled for oil. This land properly managed would have brought more ready money than we could have secured for the lease of the Sue A. Bland homestead, because we could not, at that time, deliver title or get approval for leases. We had been offered $40,000 for the lease by David R. Francis, former Secretary of The Interior. Frank O. Brown, residing in Red Fork since 1901, bought blocks 11 and 12 in the townsite of Red Fork for $1400 each and within twenty-four hours sold them for $2800 apiece.
After being sick for three days, Doctor Bland sent for me and I found him confined to his bed and suffering from an acute attack of appendicitis. We decided that his chances were better at that critical moment without an operation. He asked me to take over. When the oil and gas well was drilled in on the Sue A. Bland homestead, (N.W., S.E., Sec. 22, T.19N, R. 12 E.), just after 1:00a.m., June 25, 1901, he asked me to take full charge.
Great excitement prevailed with the discovery of the Red Fork well in 1901. Doctor Bland asked me to accept a power of attorney for the purpose of filing upon the above-described property for Sue A. Bland, his wife, a Creek citizen. Those were the days of few automobiles and telephones in our part of the country. Armed with this power of attorney and a quart bottle of Red Fork oil, I traveled in my buggy across the river to Tulsa, and got to the railroad station just in time to drop the lines and jump onto the trail. I asked a friend either to take my buggy home or to notify my wife. I went by way of Vinita on the Frisco, and on to Muskogee on the Katy.
I arrived late in the evening at Muskogee and reported immediately to Dr. F.B. Fite’s residence. On entering, I found him at home. We went into a huddle when I told him of my mission. He decided that we should test this oil and suggested we pour it on some shavings and set fire to it. After a conference we decided to go to the rear yard so there would be more room and less damage. We lighted it. He was completely satisfied, and I suggested that he pour it into a new lantern. The wick was saturated and the bottom of the lantern was filled while in the house, but we decided to light it in the rear yard. When we touched a lighted match to it, a flame came up and burned like good kerosene. We were well pleased. We then extinguished the flame and got into the doctor’s buggy and went out to the residence of Allison Aylesworth, the Dawes Commission Secretary. He had been ill for several days but was being released by Doctor Fite the next morning.
On being introduced and informed of my mission and of Doctor Bland’s illness, he told us to be at the Dawes Commission office before eight o’clock the next morning, June 26, 1901, where we would receive prompt attention. We were there promptly. Mr. Aylesworth had made all proper preparations for filing my power of attorney for the Sue A. Bland’s application for homestead allotment. When this was completed I immediately left the Commission’s office and south a private conveyance home. Before leaving Muskogee, I went to the office of Doctors F.B. Fite and J. L. Blackemore where I met Doctor Blakemore. He expressed a desire to visit Red Fork and see the well. He arranged about his practice, secured a hack, and we departed about 4:00 p.m. We traveled by course and by trail road toward Red Fork. Doctor Blakemore was the family physician of Captain F.B. Severs. He invited A. Z. English, son-in-law of Captain Severs to accompany us. Sometime in the night we missed the trail and ran into a barbed-wire fence, cutting one of the horses severely. This was near the “IX Ranch,” owned by Bluford Miller, brother-in-law of Captain Severs. Doctor Blakemore was very fortunate in securing a new horse from Bluford Miller so we could continue our journey. We arrived at Red Fork, early in the morning of June 27th.
There was a seething mass of people over every portion of ground or space that could be occupied in the town of Red Fork. Food and water were extremely scarce. In the absence of Doctor Bland and myself, different people who felt at liberty assumed authority to run the business and give orders, but this was all gradually taken care of when Doctor Bland was up and able to attend to his own business. The following persons resided in Red Fork when the well came in and were most likely the first to see it in action: Mr. and Mrs. Lee Clinton, Dr. and Mrs. J. C. W. Bland, Owen Bland, Mr. and Mrs. H.H. Adams, Lincoln Postoak, J. B. Hall, J.W. Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Frank O. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. H.E. Bridges, Mr. and Mrs. John I. Yargee, Van and Pleas Yargee, C.M. Forsythe, Mr. and Mrs. R. D. Atkins, Miss Vera Bland and sister Era Bland, Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Lindsey, Robert and Thomas Hughes, Mrs. Robert Fry, May and Lena Sanger, Rena and Sammy Norman, Colonel Robinson and sons, Edward and George, Mrs. Louise Clinton and her two children, Vera and Paul.
In the early days Doctor Bland made long professional calls in his buckboard and it thrilled me to accompany him. He had a wonderful mind and memory, and could quote extensively from the classics, prose and poetry. He was our family physician from about 1887 or 1888. From that time on our relationship was very close until his death in 1928.
My call to counsel and aid him, in the case of the oil well, was in line with our many efforts to find some self-supporting industry to develop our section of the country, and the coming state, and I did not expect to share his property. We were friends. So it may now be told, I never claimed or received one dime from the production of the well or wells drilled. It was understood that I did not even want to be reimbursed for money or any aid furnished.
Drilling wells and plugging them on large leases was too slow when you could sail to success on the wings of publicity from a producing or flowing oil well. Paul Clinton sent the first telegram to the Kansas City Star and received a check for nine dollars. The show was on. We sent for Fred Barde of Guthrie, Kansas City Star correspondent for this territory. Tulsa had no daily papers at that time. However they were numerous all over the United States, and many foreign countries were alerted by our vigilant citizens and amazed and astonished visitors.
The Red Fork well may have been like a mustard seed to some, but when one considers the time, the place, the lack of experience of the active, responsible paying participants, it was and is the considered opinion of the writer that this nationally publicized well was the spark-plug for the immediate statewide development of the greatest self-supporting industry in Oklahoma: OIL! Our dreams were to find oil and let the world know about it, believing it would be a magnet to attract oil men with associated industries.
After titles, the next problem at Red Fork was marketing the oil. The nearest refinery in 1901 was at Neodesha, Kansas. The refinery was willing to pay $1 a barrel for crude but it took 90 cents to deliver it there, leaving only 10 cents a barrel for owner and operator. These problems had been solved elsewhere, and we knew they would be remedied by the type of substantial and experienced men arriving from older fields. F.O. Brown, who resided in Red Fork, from June 25, 1901, practically all the time, later informed me that oil was shipped in barrels to the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, Independence, Kansas, at $1.32 a barrel.
All kinds of people came from everywhere by every means of transportation then in use. Well-directed publicity attracted people, not only in Indian and Oklahoma Territories, but from all over the United States. Muskogee and Oklahoma City furnished the greatest number at the beginning, who began immediately to invest their time and money in development.
We also had the benefit of the great oil companies from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kansas, Texas and other states. Guffey and Galey arrived within a few hours after the well came in. Many excursions were run on the Frisco Railroad. New companies were formed. Diligent efforts were made to secure leases or to buy land. Among those who came from Muskogee may here be mentioned: Doctor J. L. Blakemore, Doctor F.B. Fite, Mr. J. H. Hill, Attorney. From Oklahoma city came: Mr. Lee Van Winkle, Doctor Beard, William Petty, Usher Carson, Charles F. Colcord, and Robert Galbreath. Numerous other visitors included officials from the Indian Agency and the Dawes Commission at Muskogee. General Pleasant Porter, Chief of the Creek Nation, also visited the well.”
“Chronicles of Oklahoma” Dr. Fred Clinton
Nathaniel Emmons once wrote that “Any fact is better established by two or three good testimonies than by a thousand arguments.” The factual, documental quotations and citations in this article from responsible citizens in the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, added to others over the nation, lay at rest the unsupported claims of those who challenge the drilling of the Bland-Clinton oil well at Red Fork, June 25, 1901 by Doctors J. C. W. Bland and Fred S. Clinton. The quotations in this article are from people who were in position to know, personally or from reliable sources. They were responsible persons; i.e., answerable legally and morally for the payment of the bills for drilling of the Bland-Clinton oil well. Even in that early day we were careful to be trustworthy in all our promotions. “
There is another version of the stories about the Sue Bland Well. It comes from a booklet produced by Cities Service Company in 1980. Their version is quite different.
Tulsa, Energy -75 Years After Glenn Pool
“In 1901, Tulsa was the 31st town in size throughout the territories. Since its founding on leased land from the Creek Indians in 1882, Tulsa had become a cattle-wheat-and-prairie chicken stop along the Frisco railroad. It had acquired some general stores, a blacksmith, livery stables, a post office, a few houses (so to speak), a bank, the Saint Elmo Hotel, a lumber company, a pool hall, a school house, and two churches. Wagon-tracked Main Street was flanked on the west by its only aesthetic relief -- two peach orchards adjacent to the newspaper office and one and a half blocks south of the Frisco line. Its population was 1370
Life was a breeze, based on staying healthy, employing the ethics of commerce, avoiding drunk shooters and tossing garbage in the streets after neighbors had passed. For recreation, children could watch dogs fight, chase loose chickens and pigs, play in mudholes, listen for train whistles and hide in the smokehouse. Adults had lemonade picnics, church singing, deer hunts and Saturday trips to the general store for dry goods. Afterwards, while women mailed letters, the men gathered to exchange views and catch up on the outside world.
Some important news early that year was what had happened on Big Hill, near Beaumont, Texas. On January 8th, Captain Anthony J. Lucas watched a gusher which was so large that he asked, What is it?”
“Oil, captain,” a toolpusher said. “Its oil.” Spindle Top excited the country. Within four months, drilling had started in the Creek Nation on a piece of ground, described as 22-19n-12e, in the village of Red Fork, two and a half miles below Tulsa, south and west of the Arkansas River.
No one had bothered to get prior approval from the Department of the Interior (which the law clearly stipulated), but the interested parties had at least agreed. On one side were the Indians -- about six or so -- who sought to cover their tracks by stressing that they were not acting for the Creek Nation, but independently, as individuals who happened to be blessed with keen appreciation of potential royalties, and who couldn’t stand red tape. Two of them were Dr. John C. W. Bland, a businessman (when his practice in Red Fork allowed it) and his half-blood Creek wife, Sue A. (Davis) Bland. On the other side were two experienced oilmen from Pennsylvania, John S. Wick (the promoter) and Jesse A. Heydrick (who had the brains and who called the shots).
After $5,000 was raised (mostly from Pennsylvania investors), the well was spudded in on May 10, 1901, on Mrs. Bland’s farm. She and Dr. Bland were surrounded by well-wishers, fellow landowners who would naturally watch closely the drilling progress. Certainly, if oil were found on her land, it would be found on theirs.
To the west were the Yargees; to the north, a collection of Perrymans; and to the south and east, almost as many Clintons. Because their mother, Louise Clinton, was one-quarter Creek, they all had allotments. Among them were Vera Clinton, Lee Clinton, Paul Clinton and the most prominent one of all, Dr. Fred S. Clinton. He was one of Dr. Bland’s closest friends. In fact, they had practiced together in Tulsa in 1897, and Clinton had intervened at a crucial time on Heydrick’s behalf, paying $300 in rail and freight charges so some oil gear could be unloaded.
The well came in around midnight, June 24, 1901. It was just what the doctors ordered. Heydrick -- away in Pennsylvania -- had admonished Wick that if they struck oil, he was to first shut the well down and then his mouth. No one but the drilling crew was to hear about it. But, Wick lost his head and his mouth with it. Ecstatic, he sent a wire to Perry L. Crossman, the drilling contractor in Joplin. The message said “Oil is spouting over the top of the derrick.”
Those words awakened sleepy telegraphers for 200 miles, and they instantly flashed the news throughout Oklahoma’s two territories and three other states. By mid-morning, Red Fork’s few impoverished buildings, barns and horse lots were overrun by a mob of sightseers, promoters, speculators, gamblers, bad girls, doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs.
Next to what they could make from it quickly, the fans wanted to confirm what had already become a distorted story, with each telling magnifying the last. The rumors were numerous and splendid though grandiose. One was that the Sue Bland #1 would be mightier than Spindle Top, and Red Fork would surpass the great and wild Beaumont as a center of action and easy money. By mid-afternoon, throngs trampling Red Fork included most of Tulsa. There was no bridge except for trains, between Red Fork and Tulsa. There was only a ferry (a concession that belonged to Lee Clinton for awhile) and a few places that people could cross if the river were not too high. Adding to the throng were crowds from surrounding towns -- so many that “a restaurant was erected immediately at the well to feed the people,” and special trains were readied in Oklahoma City for excursions to “the oil fields,” loaded down with citizens “prepared to make investments.”
The next day, the Kansas City times, in a story datelined Sapulpa, Indian Territory, said “Telegrams are pouring in from all over the country and hundreds of people are on the grounds. It is impossible to secure livery rigs in nearby towns because of the demand.” The Times added that the “spouter” was gushing and that the country and been thrown into excitement.
On Thursday, June 27, 1901, a federal inspector dropped by to render and official opinion. What he passed on to Washington was that he saw little, that “at intervals of perhaps from 15 to 30 minutes each, a small quantity of oil was forced up by the gas to a distance of perhaps two feet above the top of the pipe, part of the oil falling back and part slopping over the sides of the pipe.”
A day later, June 28, Robert Galbreath and several of his friends arrived from Oklahoma City to view it up close. Since the Tulsa Democrat (the Tulsa Tribune’s predecessor) published only on Fridays, it was scooped by three days on the biggest story in a year or so and right in its own backyard. But its enthusiastic version was the first one that Tulsans read. Under a five-column headline, the story repeated all of the known facts and then got down to business: “There is a vast quantity of fine oil under the land around Tulsa . . . and Tulsa is in the middle of the field . . . All the world is ready for another oil excitement. And every train is bringing in men of means who want to get a foothold . . . It is impossible to foretell the outcome.”
On June 29, Heydrick returned, looked the well over and knew it was doomed to high promotion and low production. He was offered $20,000 for the well and the 40 acres around it, but his partners in Pennsylvania told him not to sell. It was their mistake, for shortly afterwards, the Department of the Interior voided the lease. Heydrick and Wick got nothing for their troubles, not even the credit for its discovery. That went to Doctors Clinton and Bland, who graciously accepted it for the rest of their lives. Clinton actually believed he deserved it, and others did too. Even the Tulsa County Historical Society erected a marker in his and Dr. Bland’s honor, praising them for having drilled the first oil well in Tulsa County.
In 1948, Carl Coke Rister in his critically acclaimed Oil! Titan of the Southwest refused to recognize Dr. Clinton’s contribution. Four years Later, Clinton told his story for the Chronicles of Oklahoma. It is a tale with more holes in it than one of Dr. Clinton’s outlaw cases in territorial days.
Dr. Clinton’s article is replete with distortions, superfluous citations and omissions. He never mentions Wick or Heydrick, never says that his name was not on the lease, never says that he did not put up a dime to finance the well, Heidrick Oil Company struck (oil), “though it misspelled Heydrick’s name. The Kansas City Times in its first report said, “two lucky Pennsylvania prospectors located the field and they have leases on the land for miles around the favored shaft.”
After Clinton’s article appeared the Heydrick heirs struck back. L.C. Heydrick wrote the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce asking for a disinterested party to look into the matter, to go to the University of Oklahoma archives and examine the “Heydrick Collection: Red Fork Discovery.” He also sent $100 to cover expenses. The Chamber, acting through Parker Ledbetter of the oil activities department, chose Dr. William A. Settle, chairman of Tulsa University’s department of history and political science. His report, issued on August 6, 1953, said, in conclusion, “that no competent and disinterested person could examine the Heydrick papers . . . without concluding that Jesse A. Heydrick and John S. Wick deserve the credit for promoting and drilling the Red Fork discovery well, the Sue A. Bland #1.
As for Dr. Clinton, he did confess however that he “never received one dime from the production of the well or wells drilled.” The Sue Bland was epochal, a fact that Robert Galbreath seemed to appreciate. He would be in Red Fork long after the mobs had gone home, drilling, failing, struggling, searching, and perhaps in time finding not a well that coughed once and died but an oil field.
Tulsa saw the well’s implications. A bunch of high-stepping, fast-moving, loud-talking promoters organized themselves as the Commercial club, forerunners of the Chamber of Commerce. They were “young, determined and proud,” committed to proving to the country that they “would not be ignored, nor pushed around.” They were cocky, brash, shameless and forever eager to toot their own horn. What was it that drove men to crow so loudly about so little? Tulsa was deprived of every modern convenience -- the sort of physical consolations that appealed to traveling salesmen and other gents with folding money. But the Commercial Club knew that and also knew that improvements follow growth. They applied themselves toward such growth, “dreaming dreams and seeing visions of a metropolis” and resolving to “stick together, to pull as one for the good of all.”
It would have been nice had the whole town agreed. Remembering the rush toward Red Fork, the club members recognized that Tulsa’s immediate and most urgent need was a bridge across the Arkansas River. The city was isolated, cut off to the south and to the west by a river that either rambled or rampaged. A town could not be like a herd of cattle, crossing only in summer, particularly if oil might develop some day. Access to the fields would be mandatory if Tulsa were to share in the extraordinary wealth that oil always delivered. Even without oil, a bridge was essential to growth. So the Commercial Club whooped up an election. But the town said no.
Then three club members resolved to build a bridge anyway. With the help from the government, a toll bridge was built. Don Hagler, George Williamson and Melvin Lairr put up much of their own cash. It was an infectious precedent that would be equaled in later days, in other ways, but it would lastingly express the notion that progress demands individuals more than consensus.
While it was being built, the Commercial Club threw itself and its bank books at the railroads and any kind of industry and promoted local construction. The bridge at the Eleventh Street crossing was dedicated in 1904. A rider and horse galloped over the planks. Tulsa’s hustling attitude soon began to have an impact, not in Indian Territory (where jealously among towns was as common as good water was rare) but in other states such as Missouri.
A reporter for the Joplin Globe came down for several days, talking to a few people, read some documents, got a haircut and returned home to write:
That little territory town, Tulsa is doing things. Tulsa now has seven railroads, five in operation, one in construction and another just chartered. It may be interesting to know how... Within the past two years Tulsa has given $37,000 in bonuses to railroads.
Within the past fortnight, Tulsa has succeeded in getting a zinc smelter to locate there. How? Well, Tulsa offered a bonus of seven acres of land, 1.5-cent gas and money, in the sum of $7,500, of which $2,500 was spot cash, the balance to be paid upon completion of the plant.
An oil refinery is soon to be added to Tulsa’s enterprises. The oilmen of Tulsa furnished the money for that {Somebody must have lied to the guy; few oilmen of significance were even here then, none with assets to finance a refinery}.”
A wholesale grocery house in Tulsa is doing a business of $750,000 a year. A new hotel will open next week. Tulsa capital made it possible. Tulsa has a Commercial Club and a manufacturers association. They work together. It is hardly necessary to say that they do things. It may be argued that Tulsa is young. Enthusiasm and youth are twins. It is also youth’s prerogative to grow. But there is this alternative before every city, whatever its age -- either grows or decline.
Prior to the railroad’s extension across the Arkansas River in 1883, the westside was settled by few people.”
Frannie Brownlee Misch captured the first community development on the westside in her story.
“From Cattle Led The Way”.
Red Fork town was located 18 miles down the river from its first intended location. Chille Morgan, a Creek Indian interpreter who died in 1897, related that the charter designated that the town of Red Fork be laid out at the juncture of the Cimarron (Red Fork) River and the Arkansas. However, with the extension of the Frisco Railroad west from Tulsa in 1884 the first location did not fit with the terminus plans, so this new town was named Red Fork to fit with the charter.
James Parkinson established a commissary store to supply the road graders who were housed in tents. A post office was established with Samuel Clay as postmaster. H.C. Hall soon opened a general store. Both merchants carried some of all kinds of supplies, including building materials. A trade was soon established with Indian posts and overland stores, making Red Fork an important freighting point. The new stockyards was a meeting place for stockmen. The country south and west of the village was unsettled and wild. The Dalton gang operated in this region and once robbed the Hall Store.
Old man Harmon built the first house there and the Charles Clintons built the next one, a three-room house with an enclosed porch. Clinton knew this western terminus of the railroad was to be an important shipping point for cattle from the Chickasaw Nation, the Shawnee Country and the territory occupied by the Sac and Fox Indians.
Louise Clinton wished to locate in a settlement where there could be a church and school for the children. She enlisted the aid of the Presbyterian Mission in Tulsa and the mission board in New York to assist in this project. She often donned her dark blue riding skirt, saddled her horse with her side saddle and rode out over the country to solicit funds for this much longed for church house. When it was completed she and her husband purchased a bell in Chicago for the church belfry.
The first teacher was a Miss Ratcliff who boarded in the Clinton home. The next teacher was Miss Effie Chambers from Sidney, Iowa, and she too boarded with the Clintons. Later Miss Chambers went to Turkey as a missionary.
The Clinton family soon began work on a large addition to their first Red Fork home on a hilltop where Clinton Junior High School now stands. Lilah Denton Lindsey was a guest there in the summer while her husband built the chimney. While here Lilah was invited by the missionary school in Tulsa to teach there in the fall.
A 160-acre Red Fork townsite was laid out in 1902. The Red Fork Derrick, a weekly newspaper, was edited and published by O. B. Jones. The village had grown from 75 people to 1,500 in 1901 when the first oil well was drilled. N.V. Yargee was an early resident as was Dr. J. C. W. Bland, the first graduate physician in Tulsa who moved to Red Fork in 1895 to have a country practice and engage in cattle raising.
Charles Clinton died in 1888 but the family retained the ranch. Mrs. Clinton lived to see her children, Fred, Lee, Paul and Vera (Mrs. J. H. McBirney) established in Tulsa. Several years ago Mrs. McBirney located the old church bell in a pile of debris when the little church was torn down. She had the bell repaired and shipped to the ranch home of her daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Hardy, near Yakima, Wash. Where it again rings loud and clear as it did in 1885.
Following the strike in Red Fork, was a continuous drive to prosper from the oil discovery. A major obstacle for Tulsans wanting to get back and forth from the field was the river; wide, unruly and often treacherous passing. Three enterprising Tulsans, M.L. Baird, J.D. Hagler, and George T. Williamson, obtained a franchise from the Federal government to build and operate a toll bridge. With their own private funds, they built a bridge of steep spans and plank flooring across the Arkansas River and opened it to traffic on Monday, January 4, 1904. The three Tulsa owners of the bridge were so proud they put up a sign at the entrance which read: “You Said We Couldn’t Do It, But We Did!”
Frannie Brownlee Misch
In November 22, 1905, Robert Galbreath of Tulsa and Frank Chesley of Sapulpa completed their discovery well in the area which later became the fabulous Glenn Pool, 15 miles south of Tulsa. By this time, nearly all the lands of the original Indian Territory had fallen to land runs and other government actions. Recognizing the growth and needs of the area, the Federal Government granted statehood in 1907 and Indian Territory became the State of Oklahoma. The population of Tulsa at the time of statehood was 7,500.
Then, in 1913, another major development took place. Josh Cosden’s refinery in West Tulsa “went on stream” to begin a record of continuous operation through a series of name changes. It is now the Sun Oil Company, DX Division.
In 1917, the United States entered the first World War. Oklahoma’s first paved roads were built in Tulsa County in 1917, after citizens voted a bond issue to pay for 105 miles of concrete-surfaced roads. In 1920 the population of nearby Tulsa had grown to 72,075.
The face of Tulsa was marred on Tuesday, May 31, 1921. Tulsa’s pace as a progressive, booming, civilized city was halted as a bitter race riot erupted. Many of the Negro population in Tulsa fled to nearby hills and towns to escape the riot. The riot lasted two days, during which time the Oklahoma National Guard was called in to quell the problems. The guard left after two days when the rioting stopped. The north side of Tulsa lay smouldering. Many of the Negroes living in Tulsa came to the west side of the river to seek safety, until the shooting and burning stopped in Tulsa. Some returned, but many stayed.
After the oil strike in 1901 and the riot 20 years later, things started to settle down on the westside. People returned to hard work and families. Children started seeing changes in their schools and neighborhoods began to grow.
Red Fork was joined by other westside towns of West Tulsa, Carbondale and Garden City. South Haven and Berryhill began to take on their own identity. Red Fork led the changes with their new high school. In 1925, the first graduating class of Red Fork High (LOCATION ) stood proud for graduation ceremonies.
On Wednesday, October 16, 1927, Red Fork annexed into the City of Tulsa with great fanfare
[1] Graham E. Lowdermilk interview by W. E. Holland on November 19, 1937. Lowdermilk was a civil engineer for the railroad through Tulsa County to Sapulpa.