Tulsa::History: June 2018 Archives

About Us - Yale Cleaners

Some local history through the lens of one company. Photos of the original location at 1110 S. Yale (south half of the two-story building next to Tally's), the Mayo Meadow Shopping Center location, and Endicott Cleaners at the Rolling Hills Shopping Center which Yale Cleaners purchased in 1962.

Tulsa Historical Society : Online Collections

Photos and documents about Tulsa's history, available anywhere, anytime.

TULSA AND OKLAHOMA HISTORY COLLECTION

The Tulsa City/County Library has been scanning items from its vertical files of newspaper clippings, as well as other books and documents pertaining to Oklahoma history. You'll find them here, as the collection continues to grow.

Oil Town "Aero Views" - American Oil & Gas Historical Society

'Traveling from Pennsylvania to Texas at the turn of the century, Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler created oil town "aero views" - panoramic maps of many of America's earliest petroleum communities....

'From 1895 to 1897, Fowler worked in the western part of Pennsylvania, especially around Pittsburgh. In 1898 and 1899, he sketched West Virginia towns, and from 1900 to 1903, he was back in Pennsylvania.

'He will travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to produce a 1918 map of the "Oil Capital of the World."

'Fowler gained commissions for city plans by interesting citizens and civic groups in the idea of a panoramic map of their community. After one town had agreed to having a map made, he would seek to involve neighboring communities.

'By noting that he had already secured an agreement for a view from one town in the area, Fowler would play on the pride, community spirit, and sense of competition of adjacent communities.

'How did Fowler create his maps? Preparation of panoramic maps "involved a vast amount of painstakingly detailed labor," explains a Library of Congress article on panoramic mapping:

'"For each project a frame or projection was developed, showing in perspective the pattern of streets. The artist then walked in the street, sketching buildings, trees, and other features to present a complete and accurate landscape as though seen from an elevation of 2,000 to 3,000 feet. These data were entered on the frame in his workroom...A careful perspective, which required a surface of three hundred square feet, was then erected from a correct survey of the city."'

History of The Glenn Pool Oil Field Educational Center

"Bob [Galbreath] and Frank [Chesley] had already drilled through the deepest, known oil-producing reservoir in the area, the Red Fork Sand, at about 1,450 ft. with a slight show a gas. They should have stopped there, but drilling was cheap. They were using only surface casing, the well was not taking water and was not caving. The steam engine boilers were being fed by coal dug off a nearby hill in Jenks. And, they were living right on the rig. On that night they made the irrational decision to drill deeper into the unknown.

"Frank had just changed shifts with Bob who went to bed on a cot next to the rig. A couple of feet below the Red Fork Sand, they drilled into a previously-unknown sandstone in that area, the Bartlesville Sand. Frank noticed a stain on the bit and ran a bailer that came up with oil in it. Frank woke up Bob saying 'Oil! Oil! My God, Bob. We got an oil well!' The well started to make gurgling noises and then blew in over the derrick with a gusher of 75 barrels of oil per day. The Oklahoma oil boom had started."