Redel Historic District

The Prairie Oil and Gas Company, a regional subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company, built the original homes of this historic district in 1906 to house workers who operated a pipeline and pumping station that was completed the year prior. The Redel District was a self-sufficient community during its early years with its workers responsible for operating the pumping station which connected the oil fields of Oklahoma and southern Kansas to the refinery in Independence. By 1920, the Sinclair-Standard trunk system connected the Kansas fields with markets and refineries as far east as Chicago. By the 1950s, changes in oil distribution led to the closure of the pumping station, but five of the historic homes remain and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Redel National Historic District, constructed in 1906, is a rare example (notably in Johnson County) of early twentieth-century company housing for industrial workers built in a rural setting. In its early days, the neighborhood functioned as a self-contained community. The workers operated a nearby pumping station, which ran from 1905 through the early 1950s. On a broader scale, the homes survive as a reminder of the dawn of the automobile age and associated boom in oil strikes, pipeline and refinery construction, and gasoline production. 

Prior to its application to power internal combustion engines, gasoline was considered more of a byproduct than an intentional product of oil refineries. With the proliferation of automobiles and other internal combustion engines, oil prospecting led to more discoveries along with the need for distribution networks connecting oilfields to refineries and gas stations. Pumping stations played a critical part of that process.

The Prairie Oil and Gas Company, a regional subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company, built a pipeline and pumping station here in 1905 and the homes followed in 1906. Prairie Oil and Gas Company obtained the fuel used for the pumping station by shipments carried on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, located within view of the Redel District homes. The pumping station performed as an integral component of the company's oil pipeline network, which drew oil from the midcontinent oil field of southern Kansas and Oklahoma, dominated by the Standard Oil Company during the early twentieth century. Standard Oil comprised sixty percent of the oil produced in Kansas and Oklahoma, with estimates for its pipeline runs for the year exceeding thirty-three million barrels; the other two pipeline companies, the Gulf and the Texas, each handled a little over five million barrels. 

The district, an urban street set in a rural landscape, consists of wood-frame, single-family residences. The community sits close to a flat floodplain and the banks of the Blue River, as well as two railroad tracks and the old Prairie pipeline pumping station. At the time of its use, residents enjoyed the neighborhood's grocery store, gardens, tennis, and croquet courts. While most used the homes for simple residential purposes, some ran separate businesses from the houses. For instance, in 1908, the Wright Family established a small grocery operation in their home. In 1909, Otto Sargent and his family purchased a Redel home and turned it into a first-class boarding house. Nevertheless, the residents' main job consisted of maintaining the pumping station. 

The Prairie Oil and Gas Company sold the land and improvements at Redel in 1915 to the Prairie Pipeline Company (later renamed Sinclair Praire Pipeline Company). By 1920, the Sinclair-Standard trunk system connected the Kansas fields with markets and refineries as far east as Chicago. In 1937, Sinclair sold houses to individual residents while leaving the one place for use by the pumping station superintendent until 1953. By the 1950s, technological advances in oil distribution rendered the pumping station unnecessary, resulting in its closure. 

While not as large or well-known as Chicago's Pullman neighborhood or other company housing developments, the Redel District shares some similarities of company towns. Standard Oil was the most dominant oil company during the early twentieth century. Workers populated the small neighborhood and worked the nearby pumping station that helped move oil from Kansas and Oklahoma to refineries in Kansas City and beyond. 

Brown, John Howard, and Mark Partridge. "The Death of a Market: Standard Oil and the Demise of 19th Century Crude Oil Exchanges." Review of Industrial Organization 13, no. 5 (1998): 569–87. 

Nimz, Dale and Richard Eippincott. "Registration Form: Redel Historic District." National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. 1996.https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/f6e6e049-a8b6-4148-a0d0-e2576e358641/.

"Redel District (1905, five buildings)." Johnson County, Kansas, Museum. https://www.jcprd.com/DocumentCenter/View/2315/Redel-District?bidId=.

Vassiliou, M. S. Historical Dictionary of the Petroleum Industry. Second edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.