International Petroleum Exposition

The first show, the International Petroleum Exposition and Congress, ran October 8 to 14, 1923, through heavy rain and martial law. In 1927 President Calvin Coolidge opened it from the White House by pressing a button that set off a simulated gusher on the grounds. When it returned after World War II it drew more than three hundred thousand visitors and moved to a five-year cycle. For 1966 a ten-acre exhibition hall went up and Mid-Continent Supply placed the Golden Driller at its entrance. The 1970s oil slump and Houston's offshore show ended it after 26,000 came in 1979.

What the plaque says

International Petroleum Exposition The International Petroleum Exposition was founded at Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1923 providing a display to the world of the latest in equipment, operational ideas and practices used in the petroleum and related industries. When the first exposition was held, it was a street bazaar type of show with equipment displays valued at $100,000. By the time of the sixteenth exhibition in 1971 it had grown to include more than five hundred of the world's leading manufacturers, services, and supply companies. The exhibits were valued at more than one billion dollars. The International Petroleum Exposition introduced many innovations in equipment, such as the steel derrick, and fostered foreign trade by promoting exports of oil equipment, thus influencing other countries in developing their own petroleum resources. L. B. Jackson, an independent oilman, was the first president of the exposition. The second was W. G. Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil Company, who presided over the International Petroleum Exposition for thirty-two years. W. K. Warren, founder of Warren Petroleum Corporation, served as president for ten years. Others who have served as president of the ex- position are R. L. Kidd, one-time chairman of Cities Service Oil Company, and Randolph Yost, president of Amoco Production Company. Oklahoma Historical Society 1971 with Oklahoma Petroleum Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Philbrook Museum of Art — 2.3 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.
• Creek Nation Council Oak Park — 3.3 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.
• Greenwood Rising — 3.5 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 — 21 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 — 3.8 mi
• First Oil Well, Tulsa County — 5.5 mi
• Glenn Pool, World's Greatest Oil Pool — 13 mi
• Sapulpa — 14 mi