First Oil Well, Tulsa County

Two Pennsylvania drillers, John S. Wick and Jesse A. Heydrick, held a doubtful lease on 410,000 acres of the Creek Nation, and when the Frisco agent at Red Fork would not release their rig against a Pennsylvania draft, Bland and Clinton paid on condition that the well go on the allotment of Sue A. Bland, Dr. Bland's wife. It blew in shortly before midnight on June 24 and drew more than four thousand fortune seekers, though it made ten barrels a day or less. Who discovered the field stayed in dispute.

What the plaque says

First Oil Well Tulsa County First oil well in Tulsa County, completed on June 25, 1901, drilled about .4 mi. west by Drs. J.C.W. Bland and Fred S. Clinton. This well brought first nation wide publi- city and oil boom to Indian Ter. Rapid industrial development made Tulsa "Oil Capital of the World."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Creek Nation Council Oak Park — 2.9 mi
  The oak on a south Tulsa hill where the Lochapoka Muscogee lit their fire in 1836 after removal from Alabama, the ceremonial ground from which Tulsa took its name.
• Philbrook Museum of Art — 3.2 mi
  Waite Phillips's 1927 Italian villa and its Villa Lante-inspired gardens, given to Tulsa in 1938 and open as an art museum since October 1939, strong in Native American art.
• Greenwood Rising — 4.4 mi
  The history center at Greenwood and Archer that tells how Tulsa's Black Wall Street was built, how white mobs burned it in 1921, and how its people rebuilt it.
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum — 26 mi
  The limestone memorial and museum on the Claremore hilltop Will Rogers bought for his retirement, opened on his birthday in 1938 and holding his papers, his films and his tomb.

More markers nearby

• Booker T. Washington High School — 4.5 mi
• International Petroleum Exposition — 5.5 mi
• Sapulpa — 9.1 mi
• Glenn Pool, World's Greatest Oil Pool — 10 mi