Ever Hear of Bartlesville?

We are clearing out of Oklahoma City.  While we could blame the heat it really would not be a good reason because there is nowhere we could go that is not just as hot.  We would be thrilled if we could just have some days below triple-digit.  But we are just going to settle for a campground that is a little more friendly to the budget.

A few hours from OKC is a little town in the northeast corner of the state named Bartlesville.  We'll go from the dusty plains to the distant foothills of the Ozark Mountains and what the locals call "Green Country".

Now, if you are in the oil business you probably, well maybe, have heard of this town.  Like Cyndee's and my home town of Borger, Tx, it pretty much exists because of oil.

Bartlesville 1910

The connection is actually even tighter.  The driving force behind the oil in both towns is Phillips 66.  Our home of Borger is the oil industry's home of the world's largest inland refinery owned by Phillips 66 and Bartlesville was the headquarters for Phillips 66 until they merged with Conoco and moved to Houston, Tx in 2002.

Everything you see is Phillips 66

Frank Phillips and his successors were sports enthusiasts.  These big buildings in downtown are not only executive and administrative offices but also house an Olympic-size swimming pool, basketball courts, gymnasiums and running tracks.  Phillips had its own semi-pro basketball team at one time and has for a long time been a huge sponsor of swimming and diving competition around the world.

John started working for Phillips in 1981 in one of their chemical plants and then was transferred to Bartlesville in 1984.  We only lived in Bartlesville for four years but lived a significant chapter of our life there.  This is where both of our children were born.  Although just barely as our youngest was only three weeks old when John took a job in Georgia.

John worked at the research center out on the west side of Bartlesville.

There is one building in town that is not Phillips 66 owned or occupied.  Frank Lloyd Wright built the Price Tower Arts Center.  It is the only high rise every realized by Wright and it opened in 1956.  We never got to go inside the tower but heard that there are no right angles/square corners anywhere in the building.

Frank Phillips was also a showman.  He built an amazing ranch just outside of town and named it Woolaroc, which stands for woods, lake and rock.  This ranch is where Phillips would entertain dignitaries and forge business deals.  It's now open to the public as a nature preserve and museum.  The museum houses a massive gun collection and western and native american art.

Woolaroc Museum

Ranch house where movie stars, politicians and Arab Kings were guests.

For our stay in Bartlesville we found a campground that was a seriously scary place back when we lived here in the 80's.  But it now has new owners and they have put a lot of work into the property and have it looking pretty good.  Riverside RV Resort and Campground is going to be our base camp for the next week.

Riverside RV in Bartlesville, OK 

Although we are killing time waiting for our appointment at the factory to get the blow-out damage repaired on the camper, we do have a purpose that will fill our days.  We have both been doing genealogy work on our families and John's family has a ton of history in the northeast corner of Oklahoma.  His great grandfather was a U.S. Marshal here when this was known as an Indian Territory, one of the terminus' of the Trail of Tears.  His great grandfather married a Cherokee woman and petitioned to become a member of the Cherokee tribe but was turned down three times before finally being accepted on his fourth attempt.  We are going to visit old homesteads and graveyards in Collinsville, Claremore, Inola and more.  Plus, there is still plenty of family in the area that we will touch base with.

After we get this week under our belt we'll move into Kansas and find someplace to hang out close to the factory.  Manhattan is looking pretty interesting.