MORE HISTORY
Marland's Oil: 1913 - 1928
E.W. Marland was the antithesis of a rugged Oklahoma cowboy - an anglophile favoring English fox hunting, Norfolk jackets and knickers. But, these refined duds and pastimes did little to conceal Marland's true nature, a rough and tumble oil explorer with a penchant for risks, the bigger the better.
After losing his luck in the oilfields of Pennsylvania, Marland headed west to Ponca City, a small Oklahoma trading town "no more than a wide place in the road," an early company employee recalled. Marland made several excursions to the famed 101 Miller Bros. Ranch in search of oil, convinced immense deposits lay beneath. Geology was his divining rod, he said, a science yet to be proven in the hunt for crude.
On nearby land, Marland secured a lease from the Ponca Indian tribe to drill at the base of a sacred burial plot. After a few failures, the first well struck oil in 1911. The gusher provided the first real evidence of oil in the mid-continental region, sparking the equivalent of a Gold Rush for oil.
Marland quickly built a small refinery to process the crude, and incorporated the Marland Oil Company to market the refined output. Hundreds of service stations were built, many drawing from Marland's personal taste in architecture -- they looked like tiny English cottages.
His "Midas Touch" brought in one well after another, including the giant Burbank and Tonkawa fields. As money flowed like the oil beneath, Marland invested the proceeds in the industry's first research division, which developed seismography techniques and new drilling methods to discover even more oil.
Soon Marland was dubbed the "millionaire producer of Ponca City." He lived the high life, playing polo on his formal estate in Ponca City with many luminaries of the day, such as humorist Will Rogers. But he was equally generous to his adopted city, endowing schools, libraries and public art.
In the late-1920s, the financier J.P. Morgan, Jr., obtained control of the Marland Oil board upon providing a $5 million line of credit to the company. When profits fell in 1928, the board replaced E.W. Marland as president with Dan Moran, a hard-boiled Texaco vice president. Not one to be down for long, Marland later resurfaced as the Governor of Oklahoma.
Moran oversaw the merger of Marland Oil with Continental Oil in 1929. It was a logical fit: Continental needed a steady supply of crude oil (Marland's strength), while Marland Oil needed more marketing outlets (Continental's strength).
The new corporation, based in Ponca City, was named the Continental Oil Company (legend has it that J.P. Morgan, Jr., couldn't wait to do away with the Marland name). It was a reckoning force, owning nearly 3,000 wells and thousands of retail outlets in 30 states.
Conoco was on its way.
LETS see some Marland Oil stuff.
