Historic Downtown Bartlesville Driving Tour

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This redwood replica of the oil well Nellie Johnstone Number One is located in Johnstone Park to commemorate the historical significance of April 15, 1897. On that day, the Nellie Johnstone became the first commercial oil well in Oklahoma, then known by the name Indian Territory. After a device known as a go-devil was dropped down the 1,300-foot well, a nitroglycerin charge sent oil rushing from below the surface and towered over the derrick. In retrospect, that explosion marked the beginning of Oklahoma’s oil boom. The well was located on land leased from the Cherokee Nation, who like other Native Americans in the region before, had been using crude oil seeps as medicine for decades. The commercial value of the Nellie Johnstone well led to additional wells and the arrival of businessmen such as Phillips Petroleum founder Frank Phillips in 1904. The influx of people and investment made Bartlesville one of the centers of oil production in the United States. Together with the influx of settlers following a series of land rushes that redistributed Native American lands, the railroad reached Bartlesville, another factor that proved essential to Oklahoma's oil boom in the early 20th century.

2. Bill Doenges Memorial Stadium

This stadium has been the home of the national pastime in Bartlesville for over ninety years. When it was dedicated in the spring of 1932 as Bartlesville Municipal Stadium, it was considered a state-of-the-art facility and could accommodate 2,000 spectators. In its early decades, the stadium hosted numerous minor league baseball teams and traveling professional teams that included sports legends like Satchel Paige and Mickey Mantle. The stadium also served as the center for community entertainment, welcoming traveling shows and other sporting events during much of the twentieth century. Numerous updates throughout its history have helped maintain the stadium while slightly expanding its capacity, and in 1997, the venue was renamed in honor of Bill Doenges, a local automobile dealer who offered financial support to area athletics.

3. Old Washington County Courthouse

The Old Washington County Courthouse was opened in 1914 and served as the central artery of government in Washington County for 59 years. During Oklahoma’s process of becoming a state in 1906 and 1907, Bartlesville was selected as the county seat and officials were elected to serve the citizens of Washington County. Following several years of county offices being spread around town, a bond issue was passed, and construction began on the courthouse in 1913. The courthouse sits on the National Register of Historic Places and is a significant piece of regional history, both for its governmental importance and for its representation of the Second Renaissance Revival architectural style.

4. Johnstone-Sare Building

Built in 1909 by influential Bartlesville resident William Johnstone, the Johnstone-Sare building remains a cornerstone of downtown Bartlesville. The building replaced the former Right Way Hotel, which also played a crucial role in Bartlesville’s early development by offering a place for visitors to stay and conduct business during the early years of the city's development and connection to the oil business. For almost a century, the Johnstone-Sare also housed one of Oklahoma’s oldest continuous family businesses, May Brothers Clothing, which was started by Russian immigrants who became a prominent local family in Bartlesville. Today, the building is a hub of the city's nightlife, even after two destructive fires engulfed the building in 2009.

5. Union Depot

Union Depot was built in 1909 to serve trains operated by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroads. During the first two decades of the 1900s, the depot saw 16 passenger trains a day and numerous freight cars. It acted as an entrance to downtown Bartlesville for oilmen and entrepreneurs coming to the city in hopes of getting in on Oklahoma’s oil boom. Throughout its history, the depot has undergone several renovations, adding to its Mission/Spanish Colonial architectural style. Passenger rail service stopped running through Bartlesville in 1971, but today, the depot still serves the community, acting as the headquarters for the Bartlesville Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Bartlesville Development Corporation, as well as a gateway to Bartlesville’s railroad history and wider past.

6. Douglass School (1907-1971)

Established in 1907, Douglass School served as the official public school for the children of Bartlesville’s Black community. During the time of Jim Crow segregation, which existed in Oklahoma just as it did across the United States, schools in Bartlesville were separated by race. Founded in the same year as Oklahoma’s statehood, Douglass provided an essential function to African American residents of the Bartlesville area and would serve as the single, publicly funded Black school in the city for nearly fifty years. The Bartlesville School District was desegregated in 1956, two years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision, which ordered schools across the country to end segregation. Douglass School continued to operate until 1971, and the building was utilized for a variety of purposes in the years that followed. In 2012, the remnants of its gymnasium, the last remaining portion of the building, was razed.

7. Frank Phillips Home

Built in 1909, this 26-room mansion was built for the family of Frank Phillips. Frank helped establish the Phillips Petroleum Company with his brother L. E. Phillips in 1917. Frank and Jane Phillips lived in this home along with their children from its completion in 1909 until 1973. Their granddaughter, Betty Irwin, would donate the property and its contents to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

8. Bartlesville Women's Club

Opened in 1957, the Bartlesville Women’s Club is the result of long-lasting partnerships among Bartlesville’s many women’s organizations. The Tuesday Club, Bartlesville’s first group, worked in its early years to fight illiteracy in the frontier town and acted as a leader among the social structure of the clubs throughout the twentieth century. Other groups, like the Musical Research Society aided with public education, while the Indian Women’s Club brought Native American women together, and West Side groups such as the Renaissance Club operated in Bartlesville’s African American community. Today, the clubhouse still holds club meetings and community programs and is available to be rented by anyone in the community. Its continued use acts as reminder of the proud past of Bartlesville’s women.

9. Bartlesville Community Center

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégé William Wesley Peters, the Bartlesville Community Center has become the cultural hub of Bartlesville since its opening in 1982. The center features a curved design and earth-tone color on its outside, while the world’s largest work of cloisonné art and a 1,700-seat concert hall can be found in its interior. Before the Community Center sat at this intersection, it was the home of a two-room log schoolhouse and later Garfield School, Bartlesville’s pioneering permanent grade school. Garfield’s enrollment rose steadily through the early decades of the 1900s matching Bartlesville’s rapid growth before falling off with the city’s outward expansion. Eventually, the school was razed to make way for the now iconic Community Center.

10. Price Tower

The Price Tower was constructed from 1952 to 1956 and stands as the only skyscraper designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Recognized as one of Wright’s most important works by the American Institute of Architects in 1960, the building’s nineteen stories are supported by four interior columns and it’s outside is embellished with distinct, twenty-foot pre-oxidized copper panels. The tower was built for Bartlesville businessman H.C. Price, who moved to the area in 1915 and went on to establish one of the most successful pipeline welding companies in the world following World War II. Wright called his tower a “tree that escaped a crowded forest,” remarking how this lone skyscraper stood proudly outside of a traditional metropolitan downtown setting. The Price Tower was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 2007.

11. Bartlesville Area History Museum

The Bartlesville Area History Museum was founded as the History Room at the Bartlesville Public Library in 1964 and moved to this space in 2000. Before housing city offices and the museum, this building was home to the Hotel Maire, which opened in 1913, and later the Burlingame Hotel. The Maire and Burlingame were considered luxury lodging options in Bartlesville and were known to serve the city’s elite during the early decades of the twentieth century. In the late 1960s, as the hotel closed, the building became the Phillips Annex, providing around 50,000 square feet of workspace to Bartlesville’s most successful company.

This Tour is a Driving or Biking Tour.

Historic Downtown Bartlesville Driving Tour

Created by Jackson Hodges on April 25th 2022, 8:24:06 pm.

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Description

This tour of downtown Bartlesville starts at the Nellie Johnstone Number One, the first commercial oil well in Oklahoma. It then takes you to some of Bartlesville’s most timeless buildings, moving north to south and cutting across downtown Bartlesville. The stops on this tour illuminate the city’s past as an oil boom town and the various communities that make up Bartlesville’s rich history. It also touches on a variety of historical themes, including segregation, political history, architecture, and sports history. The experience concludes at the Bartlesville Area History Museum, which you can visit Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Entries on This Tour

Historic Downtown Bartlesville Driving Tour

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