Historic Rogers County

HISTORIC ROGERS COUNTY 

An Illustrated History 

by Bob Burke & Eric Dabney 

A publication of the Rogers County Historical Society

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HISTORIC 

ROGERS COUNTY 


by Bob Burke & Eric Dabney 

Commissioned by the Rogers County Historical Society 

Historical Publishing Network 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

First Edition 

Copyright © 2010 Historical Publishing Network 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790. 

ISBN: 9781935377115 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2010921477 

Historic Rogers County: An Illustrated History 

authors: Bob Burke 

Eric Dabney 

cover artists: Annie Paulton 

Noel Kaho 

contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Eric Dabney 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Lou Ann Murphy 

administration: Donna M. Mata 

Melissa G. Quinn 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart 

Glenda Tarazon Krouse 

Evelyn Hart 

PRINTED IN CHINA 

2 ✦ HISTORIC ROGERS COUNTY

CONTENTS 

4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

5 CHAPTER I A rich heritage 

13 CHAPTER II Statehood and the County Seat 

25 CHAPTER III Continuing the tradition 

31 CHAPTER IV Other places we call home 

43 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

44 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

90 SPONSORS 

91 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 

Contents ✦ 3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The authors would like to thank Elwyn Isaacs, Fran Jones, and John Cary for their tireless efforts in helping us better tell 

the story of their beloved Rogers County. 


CHAPTER I 

A RICH 

H ERITAGE 

The desire of early French traders to supply furs for wealthy customers in Europe gave birth to 

the first permanent settlement in what would become Rogers County. Before 1802 the area was a 

wilderness of rich prairie and lowlands dotted with small hills. Along the streams and in the open 

prairies were abundant supplies of wildlife which had attracted hunters and trappers for generations. 

Archeologists have documented more than sixty prehistoric sites in Rogers County. 

The first known inhabitants of the area were the Wichita Indians. In the eighteenth century, the 

bounty of nature attracted frequent visits by French fur traders and hunters from the Arkansas Band 

of Osage that had settled in present northeast Oklahoma in the 1760s. The Osage came to the Three 

Forks Area, the region around the confluence of the Arkansas, Neosho (Grand), and Verdigris Rivers. 

Even before the arrival of the Osage, reports from French explorers, such as Bernard de la Harpe 

in 1719, intrigued fur traders who were looking for a bountiful supply of furs. French traders and 

trappers began visiting the area, often remaining for the entire trapping and hunting seasons to 

procure furs and pelts. They camped on the banks of streams and bartered with Native Americans 

who often led them to areas that were teeming with fur-bearing animals—deer, beaver, lynx, otter, 

mink, fox, wolf, raccoon, bear, and buffalo. 

The French left their legacy in the region in naming places and streams. The Verdigris River was 

named by French explorers. Verdigris means “green.” Journals of early explorers said the growing moss 

and algae gave the water a distinct green tint. Hunters and trappers used the river for transportation. 

❖ 

Early morning dawns along the 

Verdigris River between Catoosa 

and Claremore. 

PHOTO BY ERIC DABNEY. 

Chapter I ✦ 5

The Osage held high rank among the old 

hunting tribes of the Great Plains. They were 

experienced warriors and hunters who 

established trading relationships and defense 

alliances with the French. The Three Forks area 

became a hotbed of trading activity between the 

Osage and the Chouteau brothers of St. Louis, 

Missouri. Rene Auguste Chouteau built the 

trading post that became St. Louis, Missouri. He 

and his half brother, Jean Pierre Chouteau, 

began trading with the Osage and dominated 

the introduction of commerce to Arkansas and 

Oklahoma for decades. 

The Osage trapped along the streams of 

Rogers County and brought their furs to trading 

posts in exchange for textiles, guns, knives, 

ammunition, copper, playing cards, cheap 

jewelry, calico, gunpowder, and tobacco pipes. 

In return the traders shipped large quantities of 

pelts to France and England where they were in 

great demand. 

In 1802, Pierre Chouteau convinced a band 

of the Osage to move to present Rogers County, 

establishing two villages. Pasuga, or Black Dog’s 

Town, was at the site of present Claremore. 

Osage Chief Black Dog brought many of his 

people to make their home in the new village. 

Black Dog shared power with other Osage chiefs. 

The other village was Pasona which rose from 

the earth near a mound covering twenty-five acres 

along the Verdigris River eight miles northwest of 

Claremore. What became known as Claremore 

Mound was comprised of flat layers of limestone 

that rise eighty feet above the surrounding terrain 

with steep sides and cracks and crevices. 

The mound provided a natural fortification 

and a sense of security for the Indians led by 

Chief Gra-mo’n, “arrow going home,” and as 

many as five hundred members of his band. The 

top of the mound was flat. 

Residents began calling the mound Clermont, 

a French word for “clear mountain,” and French 

officials called Chief Gra-mo’n by several names, 

including Clermont, pronounced by the English 

“Claremore.” The chief was an impressive figure, 

a strong and able leader who was referred to 

as the ‘builder of towns.” He was a master 

politician and eloquent speaker with four wives 

and 37 children. 

Houses at Pasona and Pasuga were built of a 

framework of poles covered with bark and brush. 

The structures often required great repair after 

the Indians returned from frequent buffalo 

hunts farther west. A year after the villages were 

established, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte 

had political and economic problems at home 

and sold his expansive Louisiana to the United 

States for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase 

encompassed parts of fifteen present states and 

two Canadian provinces. All of Oklahoma was 

included in the purchase. 

Chief Clermont and his people were well 

settled when a part of the Albert Pike 

Expedition, led by Lieutenant James Wilkinson, 

visited the village in 1806. Wilkinson observed 

the Osage as a highly civilized people who 

depended upon the land, streams, and forests 

for subsistence. 

Shortly after the Osage arrived in northeast 

Oklahoma, Western Cherokees began hunting 

and settling the area. For various reasons, the 

Western Cherokees had left their traditional 

homes in the southeastern United States to 

locate along the streams of what are the Arkansas 

and White Rivers in present-day Arkansas. The 

Osage did not like the Western Cherokees and 

considered them to be intruders in their land. 

For several years there were incidents of 

warfare between the two peoples. The fighting 

took a turn for the worse in 1817 when the 

federal government began negotiating treaties 

that would eventually relocate Cherokees into 

Indian Territory. The Osage continued raids into 

Cherokee country. In retribution for the Osage 

raids, the Cherokees, joined by Choctaw, 

Chickasaw, Delaware, and other allies gathered 

ammunition and warriors and formed a war 

party of seven hundred in October 1817 to 

march into the Osage Country. 

Chief Clermont and many of his warriors 

were away on a hunting trip. However, many 

old men, women, and children were left behind. 

Under the cover of darkness, the invading 

warriors began a massacre known as the Battle 

of Claremore Mound. During the assault with 

bows and arrows and guns, many Osage died 

while others fled to the mound for safety and 

some plunged into the river. 

Historians believe 83 Osage were killed, 

including 69 women and children. Another 

hundred Osage were captured and the village was 

burned. One historian wrote, “The Peaceful village 


of yesterday had become a shambles. The motley 

group of silent, serene, civilized red men who so 

calmly followed the trail the day before had been 

transformed into a mad melee of furies.” 

Many historians have written that Chief 

Clermont was killed in the massacre. Rachel 

Eaton wrote in The Chronicles of Oklahoma in 

1930 that Clermont was killed and buried in a 

shallow grave covered by a huge pile of 

limestone rocks. Other historians also reported 

that the Osage leader died in the 1817 battle 

that was sometimes called Strawberry Moon to 

indicate the season of wild strawberries blooming. 

But most historians believe that Chief 

Clermont served past 1817. In fact the records 

of several subsequent historical events prove 

that he was absent from the village at the time of 

the massacre and lived to lead the effort to 

repair their homes, reorganize the band, and 

take up life again. A visitor in 1820 reported 

that the Osage village had 3,000 inhabitants and 

300 lodges. Secretary of State John Calhoun, 

who sided with the Cherokees in disputes over 

the land, sent Major William Bradford to talk 

with the aging Osage chief. The reports of 

Bradford’s visit confirm that Clermont was still 

alive and very much in control of his people. 

Clermont welcomed the building of nearby 

Union Mission in 1820 and communicated with 

its leaders. Upon a visit to Clermont’s town, Dr. 

❖ 

Mrs. C. S. Wortman paid tribute to 

the tragic battle at Claremore Mound 

in this poem and illustration of the 

historic site, which is located a few 

miles northwest of Claremore. 

Chapter I ✦ 7

❖ 

Clement Vann Rogers, the county’s 

namesake and father of Will Rogers, 

was born of Cherokee descent on the 

family farm in the Cherokee Nation 

near present-day Westville, 

Oklahoma, to Sallie Vann and Robert 

Rogers, Jr., on January 11, 1839. 

Educated at the Baptist Mission 

School and the Cherokee Male 

Seminary, Clem Rogers pioneered a 

ranch and trading post about fifteen 

miles north of present-day Claremore 

in the Cooweescoowee District. He 

married Mary America Schrimsher, 

also of Cherokee descent, in 1858, 

and the couple moved to the Rogers’ 

ranch on the frontier of Indian 

Territory. During the Civil War, Clem 

served as a captain of the Cherokee 

cavalry for the Confederate Army; his 

division was the last to surrender to 

the Union. In 1870 the couple built a 

new log-walled home at Oologah. 

Clem’s 60,000-acre ranch bordered 

the Verdigris and Caney rivers and he 

fed up to 10,000 Texas Longhorns. He 

was an outstanding farmer and 

introduced wheat production and 

barbed wire in the district. Clem also 

served a two-year term as a district 

judge and was a member of the 

Cherokee Senate for five terms. He 

negotiated with the Dawes 

Commission and was the eldest 

delegate to the Oklahoma 

Constitutional Convention of 1906- 

07, where it was decided to name 

Rogers County in his honor. After his 

wife died in 1890, Clem moved to 

Claremore and remained active in 

local government and banking and 

served as the town’s first treasurer. 

Clem Rogers died on October 28, 

1911, and is buried with his family 

at Chelsea. 

Marcus Palmer wrote, “As we approached the 

town, the head Chief [Claremore] came out to 

meet us, and bid us welcome…Having entered 

the lodge, and had our horses turned out, we 

took a humble seat around the fire.” 

As the Osage continued to have problems 

with the Cherokees, the federal government 

intervened and sent Arkansas Territory 

Governor James Miller to talk to Clermont in 

August 1820. Miller reported to Washington 

that Clermont made a speech in which he said, 

“We don’t want the Cherokees to steal what game 

there is on our land. We want it for ourselves.” 

In 1821, American explorers Hugh Glenn 

and Jacob Fowler visited Clermont’s village and 

traded for hides. On September 30, Glenn, 

camping for the night near present Claremore, 

wrote, “Heare We find not one sole in or about 

the vilege, the Indians are al gon a buffelow 

Hunting and not Espected to return till in the 

Winter.” Glenn reported seeing wild horses 

that day. 

In 1823 one of Clermont’s sons, Mad Buffalo, 

was accused of leading a group of Osage who 

raided a Choctaw camp and killed several men, 

including a U.S. Army officer. 

Colonel Matthew Arbuckle, who had been 

sent west to quell the hostilities among the 

tribes, demanded that Clermont turn over to the 

Army all those responsible for killing the officer. 

The following year, Arbuckle established Fort 

Gibson, the westernmost fort built by the 

military to guard the western frontier of the 

United States. 

Clermont took six hundred warriors with him 

on a trip to Fort Gibson in 1824. Six of his 

warriors, including his son, agreed to be 

imprisoned and tried for their crimes. In a long 

trial at Little Rock, Arkansas, Mad Buffalo and 

another Osage were found guilty and sentenced to 

be hanged. Shortly thereafter, without comment, 

President John Quincy Adams pardoned the two 

warriors as one of his first presidential actions 

after taking office in early 1825. 

In June 1825 Clermont was present in 

St. Louis as principal chief of the Osage to sign 

the Osage Treaty of 1825, giving up their land in 

Oklahoma. Among the witnesses present for the 

signing were Pierre Chouteau and U.S. Indian 

Commissioner William Clark. Clermont signed 

the treaty on behalf of his tribe. 

Clermont had good relations with white 

settlers who began arriving in the region in 

anticipation of the removal of the Five Civilized 

Tribes to Indian Territory. Clermont died in his 

village in 1828. He was succeeded by one of 

his sons, commonly referred to as Young 

Chief Clermont. The Osage were eventually 

relocated to a reserve in present Osage County. 

When oil was discovered on the reservation, the 

Osage became the wealthiest nation per capita 

on earth. 

In 1828 the Western Cherokees exchanged 

their land in Arkansas for a new home in 

northeastern Oklahoma, including Rogers 

County. Only a few Cherokees made their way 

into the area for the next ten years in what was 

known as the Saline District of the Cherokee 

Nation. The Cherokees continued their civilized 

ways of cultivating the land, raising crops, and 

tending cattle, even though their travels to 

Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears were fatal to 

many members of the tribe. 

One of the first Cherokee settlers in Rogers 

County was Charles Coody. In 1839 he settled 

at a place called Coker Spring and set out locust 

trees he had brought with him from the Grand 

River bottoms. He had a large family and 

brought supplies from which to build a home. 

After a few years at the spring, he moved to 

what became known as Coody’s Bluff. Coody 

later served as a member of the Cherokee 

legislature. He was president of the Cherokee 

Senate when he died in 1844. 


One of Coody’s neighbors was John 

Chambers, a prominent Cherokee who 

settled not far from Big Lake, south of 

Claremore. During the great flood of 1844, 

Chambers was away on business when flood 

waters from the Verdigris River surrounded his 

home. Osage hunters camping near the place 

made a bark canoe and rescued Chambers’ wife 

and children. 

In 1842, Elijah Hicks, brother-in-law of 

Cherokee Chief John Ross, settled at the present 

site of Woodlawn Cemetery, land previously 

occupied by Osage Chief Black Dog. The Osage 

left a large peach orchard. 

In 1856 the Cooweescoowee District was 

carved from the western part of the Saline 

District and included present Rogers County. 

From the new district came prominent 

Cherokee leaders who prospered, organized a 

government, established towns, plantations, 

and an extensive educational system. 

Clement Vann “Clem” Rogers came to the 

area in 1856 and became a successful mixedblood 

Cherokee rancher and trader. He was still 

in his teens when he arrived in the new land. 

Clem traveled to the county which would be 

named for him at Oklahoma statehood along the 

old road that ran northwest from Fort Gibson 

and joined the Santa Fe Trail two days’ ride 

north of Coody’s. 

The Civil War created division among 

families in Rogers County as it did in most 

areas of the United States. Stand Watie, the 

Cherokee leader, sought recruits for his 

Mounted Rifles Regiment. War struck the Indian 

country. Clem Rogers and other residents 

sought shelter at Fort Gibson. Clem joined up 

with General Watie and for awhile served as a 

first lieutenant, then captain. 

With the defeat of the South, and the 

Cherokees, Clem’s slaves were freed and any 

money he had saved had gone down with the 

Confederacy. He took several jobs on salary at 

Fort Gibson and also hauled freight. Not happy 

with working for someone else, Clem set out for 

Verdigris country again. In the spring of 1868 

he bought a small herd of cattle and a cabin 

from Tom Boot on a ranch overlooking the river 

three miles east of Oologah. The unbroken, 

bluestem grass provided perfect pasture in the 

Verdigris River bottom. Soon, Clem built a new 

cabin, corrals, fenced gardens, and other 

structures. The cabins were joined into a 

massive log structure that was called the White 

House on the Verdigris. 

At the Rogers’ ranch, Clem’s life as a rancher 

was busy, but he was not too busy to serve as a 

legislator, judge, and member of the local school 

board. His fairness and concern for the people 

made him popular with Cherokees and white 

settlers alike. On November 4, 1879, Mary 

Rogers gave birth to a son, William Penn Adair 

Rogers. Will would become the most famous 

Oklahoman ever. 

After the Civil War, Delaware Chief John 

Bullett obtained permission from the Cherokees 

to move the village of Clermont and establish 

it as a Delaware settlement on Cherokee 

land. The new site was about three miles east 

of the Claremore Mound. It was not the 

final location of what would become the city 

of Claremore. 

The center of the Cooweescoowee District 

was at Kephart’s Springs, six miles northeast 

of present Claremore. Residents of the 

Cherokee Nation west of the Grand River, south 

of the Kansas line, east of the Osage Nation, and 

east and north of the Creek Nation had to 

come to Kephart’s Springs to court. The 

courthouse was built of logs next to a 

hickory tree. If an Indian stole a horse or swore 

a lie, he was tied to the tree and given fifty 

lashes on his bare back. Clem Rogers was one of 

the district judges. 

❖ 

Mary America Schrimsher Rogers, 

wife of Clem Rogers and mother of 

Will Rogers, was born to a Dutch 

father and Welsh and Cherokee 

mother in Indian Territory in 1839. 

She was educated at the Cherokee 

Female Seminary at Tahlequah, 

Oklahoma, where she met Clem 

Rogers. Married at the age of twenty, 

she was forced to flee to Texas to take 

refuge during the Civil War. When she 

and her husband returned home they 

established a ranch at Oologah. She 

gave birth to eight children and her 

last child, William Penn Adair 

Rogers, was born when she was 

forty. Mary Rogers died a decade later 

in 1890. 

Chapter I ✦ 9

❖ 

Above: The St. Louis and San 

Francisco Railroad, also known as the 

Frisco Railroad, first established a 

depot in Claremore in 1882. 

Below: One of two passenger train 

stations operating in Claremore in the 

early 1900s, the Missouri Pacific and 

Iron Mountain Passenger Station was 

located behind the historic Belvidere 

Mansion in Claremore. 

A post office for Clermont was established on 

June 25, 1874. Some say it was a clerical error 

that the new post office was listed as Claremore 

rather than Clermont. Others reported that 

Clermont had always been pronounced 

“Claremore” by most people in the area. In any 

event, the name Claremore stuck and the town 

was officially born. 

The railroad was the driving factor in 

Claremore’s early growth. The Frisco Railroad 

laid tracks through Claremore’s present townsite 

in 1882. The railway bridge was built across the 

Verdigris River near Catoosa in 1887. At one 

time, Claremore had two train depots. The 

Missouri Pacific was on the east side of Main 

Street and the Frisco Depot was on the west. 

The Frisco traversed the county from northeast 

to southwest. In 1889 the Kansas and Arkansas 

Valley Railroad, which later became the Missouri 

Pacific Railroad, laid its tracks through the 

county from the southeast corner to the north. 

The coming of the railroad had a magnetic 

appeal for new settlers. Where the rails were 

laid, new settlements arose. If a town originally 

was built nearby, buildings were relocated 

adjacent to the railroad. All it took to start a 

town was a store. But railroads also resulted in 

the demise of early Rogers County communities. 

Eli sprang up near the Verdigris River after Rod 

Perry built a store there. However, when 

Collinsville was located on the railroad, Eli 

disappeared into the prairie. 


In 1882, Rogers County received its second 

post office at Chelsea. Three years later, the 

town was surveyed and platted by the Cherokee 

Nation. After oil was discovered in the area, 

Chelsea’s Main Street had raised wooden 

sidewalks. A post office was established at 

Catoosa in 1883. 

In 1883 the Indian Commission approved 

the plat for a square mile to be the town of 

Claremore. Lots sold between $5 and $31 at a 

public auction on August 1, 1883. In 1889 the 

Cherokee courthouse at Kephart’s Springs was 

moved to Claremore. 

In early years, Rogers County children 

attended primarily subscription schools 

maintained by teachers for a monthly stipend 

per child. Other local schools paid their 

teachers outright. Cherokees sent their children 

to the Cherokee National Seminaries. For years, 

Claremore had more students at the Cherokee 

seminaries in Tahlequah than any other town in 

Indian Territory. 

The U.S. Oil and Gas Company (USOG) was 

organized in 1887 by Edward Byrd, an 

intermarried citizen of the Cherokee Nation. 

There was talk of oil being beneath the Rogers 

County surface. In 1882, Byrd discovered an oil 

seep southwest of Chelsea. In 1889, USOG 

completed an oil well near Spencer Creek, near 

the oil seep. By 1891 ten more wells were 

drilled nearby. However, the most prolific of the 

wells produced only fifteen barrels a day in the 

shallow field. Later drillers found oil in 

numerous places in the county at no more than 

five hundred feet deep. 

Natural gas was also discovered in Rogers 

County in the twentieth century. One field is 

east of Talala, in the big bend of the Verdigris 

River. The county’s greatest gas field yet 

discovered is southwest of Foyil. Many towns 

and cities such as Claremore, Chelsea, Foyil, 

and Oologah are supplied with gas from local 

fields. Coal was first mined in Rogers County in 

1890. It was stripped from forty to seventy feet 

below the surface. 

Dr. Jesse C. Bushyhead began practicing 

medicine in Claremore in 1891. Bushyhead was 

a beloved doctor in Claremore for more than 

fifty years. He also served as Treasurer of the 

Cherokee Nation, was a member of the original 

Will Rogers Commission, and was named to the 

Oklahoma Hall of Fame. 

The oldest surviving business in Rogers 

County is the Claremore Daily Progress. The 

newspaper began in 1892 when Joe Kline, an 

educated ranch hand, found an old Army press 

at a mission school in Kansas and published a 

weekly newspaper. After three editions, Kline 

handed over the operation to another man. 

With the newspaper about to fold, F. A. Nielson, 

Claremore’s most prominent businessman, 

convinced his brother in law, A. L. Kates, to 

come to Claremore from New Jersey. In 1893, 

Kates began publishing the newspaper. He later 

was one of only two editors in Indian Territory 

who stood for single statehood for Oklahoma. 

Kates published the Progress for forty-five years 

until his death in 1938. 

Kates began to promote the establishing of 

public schools for all children. When the 

Cherokees made payments following the sale of 

the Cherokee Outlet, Kates’ dream of a brick 

school house for Claremore was realized. The 

❖ 

Left: First Baptist Church at East Will 

Rogers and Chickasaw in Claremore, 

c. 1916. 

Below: Claremore’s North Methodist 

Episcopal Church and parsonage at 

Fifth and Weenoah. 

Chapter I ✦ 11

❖ 

Right: This early souvenir program 

published by The Claremore 

Commercial Club reflected the vibrant 

community of Claremore and its 

famous “radium water.” Originally 

discovered by oilman George Eaton, 

the medicinal waters would attract 

thousands to the city’s many 

bathhouses. Though Eaton christened 

the name “radium water,” later tests 

would verify that no radium existed in 

the water. 

Below: Claremore City Hall opened in 

1911 and remained in use until a new 

complex was built in 1963. The 

original building’s first floor included 

police and judicial offices as well as 

offices for the fire chief, police chief, 

and mayor. The second floor included 

offices for city workers as well as the 

sleeping quarters for the city’s 

firemen. A six-cell jail was located in 

the basement. 

first school opened was in the old Presbyterian 

Church. With the help of the Commercial Club, 

a predecessor of the Chamber of Commerce, 

money was raised to build the town’s first 

school, a two-room brick building. 

With the population expanding rapidly, new 

settlements were born on the prairie. From 1890 

to 1898, post offices were granted for settlements 

at Inola, Talala, Foyil, Oologah, and Bushyhead. 

By the beginning of the twentieth century, 

Claremore was larger than Tulsa. 


❖ 

The stately Belvidere Mansion 

in 2008. 

PHOTO BY SHELLEY DABNEY. 

CHAPTER II 

S TATEHOOD AND THE C OUNTY S EAT 

Before 1900, white settlers became a large part of the population of Rogers County. Prairie grasses 

and plenty of water made for excellent ranching conditions. The climate and topography were 

suitable for a variety of crops, including cotton, corn, and wheat. Agriculture, especially raising 

livestock, was established as the main source of income. 

Chapter II ✦ 13

❖ 

Above: Claremore’s City Hall, 

c. 1900, was also the home of the 

town’s horse-drawn fire wagon and 

team of horses. 

Top, right: Claremore’s First Christian 

Church began meeting in 1894 and 

built this structure at the corner of 

Sixth and Florence Streets in 1907. 

The congregation met in the building 

until 1947, when a new church was 

built at Fifth Street. 

Below: The Sequoyah Hotel and 

Radium Institute stood on the 

southwest corner of Missouri and 

Third Streets in Claremore. The hotel 

was built in 1901 and radium baths 

were added in 1905. The Bayless 

family name can be seen at the top of 

the building. John and Mary Bayless 

were among the city’s most prominent 

families. They arrived in Claremore in 

1901 and John served as a banker 

and the prominent builder of several 

historic buildings including the 

Windsor Opera House and the 

Claremore Athletic Association. The 

family home, Belvidere Mansion, is 

now the home of the Rogers County 

Historical Society. 

Claremore was one of Indian Territory’s most 

stable towns with the finest hotels in the 

territory, five debt-free churches, an opera 

house, two banks, a large flour mill, and two 

newspapers, a federal court and nearly thirty 

rock and brick business buildings. Frequent 

trains brought visitors to town, although some 

citizens complained about pistol shots being 

heard at night and general rowdiness on the 

streets after dark. 

The town was progressive. A telephone 

franchise was granted to three businessmen 

in 1899 and Charles Hall was granted a 

twenty-year electric franchise in 1904. In 

1901, Mayberry Brothers announced the 

construction of a new shop to take care of 

automobiles, the newfangled “gasoline hoss,” 

that was beginning to make its appearance 

in Rogers County. It would 

be after statehood until Guy 

Bayless brought his first new 

automobile to Claremore. 

John Bayless, Guy’s father, 

who owned the Sequoyah 

Hotel, the Windsor Opera 

House, and the Claremore 

Athletic Club, built a threestory 

Victorian mansion, 

called “Belvidere Mansion.” 

The third floor was a ballroom 

with electric lights. The 

mansion was in disrepair 

until the Rogers County 

Historical Society purchased the property in 

1991. It has been returned to its luster of the 

early 1900s and is listed on the National 

Register of Historic Places. 

The fame of Claremore’s mineral waters was 

discovered “in an accident that happens to 

people who are progressive, who are looking for 

something new.” While drilling for oil and gas, 

G. W. Eaton discovered the first radium well 

in Claremore in 1903. At about eleven hundred 

feet, the artesian water bubbled to the water and 

poured over a ledge of rock, forming a small 

pool where several people bathed. Early reports 

were that the sulpho-saline water was a cure for 

rheumatism, skin and blood diseases, and other 

ailments. Several bath houses were eventually 

built. With only a limited amount of advertising, 

tourists began bathing in the mineral water. One 

local newspaper ad said, “Come to Claremore 

with its 600 rooms for visitors and good hotel 

accommodations for all comers and goers.” 


Early newspaper stories claimed that people 

were brought to the bath houses on cots with 

“enlarged or swollen joints, too tender and 

painful to permit even the weight of a blanket 

with impunity” and left fully cured. The mineral 

water was also purportedly good for stomach 

problems. “Patients who were unable to keep 

anything but the very lightest food on their 

stomachs when they came to Claremore,” a 

newspaper report said, “but they have been 

❖ 

Above left and right: The Radium was 

the first community-sponsored 

bathhouse built in Claremore in 1924 

and boasted healing powers for all 

kinds of ailments. One popular ad 

read “Radium Water Bath will 

Improve Your Health: Recommended 

for Rheumatism, Stomach Troubles, 

Boils, Eczema, and Other Skin 

Diseases.” It was located on what is 

now the site of the J. M. Davis Gun 

Museum and offered a single bath for 

$1 or 21 baths for $16.50, while 

massages ranged in price from 

50 cents to $3. 

Left and below: This original label 

was taken from a bottle of radium 

water sold by historic Mendenhalls 

Bath House at Seventh Street and 

Lavira Avenue in Claremore. The 

hotel and bath was built in 1905 by 

Watson James Mendenhall on the 

same property where G. W. Eaton’s 

original Radium Town well was 

located. Today, Radium Town has 

become part of Claremore and the 

hotel, still standing, is an 

apartment building. 

Chapter II ✦ 15

❖ 

Top: Looking east along Third or 

Main Street in downtown Claremore 

around the time of statehood in 1907. 

Farmers Bank is located on the right 

and J. L. Wilson and Sons Hardware 

is located on the left. 

Above: This street scene was taken 

looking west along Third, also known 

as Main, Street in Claremore in 1908. 

cured and have eaten for their farewell meal 

ham and fried cabbage.” 

Will Rogers once said of the mineral water, 

“Claremore is a town that reached its enviable 

position through hard work, perseverance, and 

water that will cure you of everything but being 

a Democrat.” 

The influx of white settlers to Rogers County 

and the Cherokee Nation placed pressure on 

both the Cherokees and the federal government. 

Without a way to assess taxes, the Cherokees 

could not provide adequate education or law 

enforcement for the area. Congress had 

established the Dawes Commission in 1893 to 

settle the federal government’s dilemma with the 

Cherokees. By 1889 the Indians were brought 

under the laws and courts of the United States. 

However, a series of laws making the Cherokees 

citizens of the nation sounded a death knell for 

the independence of the Cherokee Nation. 

Against the backdrop of the Cherokees and 

other Indian tribes in Oklahoma losing their 

independent nation status, there was “agitation” 

for statehood. It was first suggested that Rogers 

County be part of the State of Sequoyah, made 

up of the land in Indian Territory. Oklahoma 

Territory would be a separate state. However, 

Congress wanted only one state. 

In 1906, Clem Rogers was elected as a 

delegate to the state constitutional convention 

in Guthrie. It was assumed that the area around 

Claremore would be called Cooweescoowee 

County, although many believed the name was 

too long and people would have problems 

pronouncing it. Others suggested the county be 

named for Cherokee Chief John Ross. 

In January 1907, Rogers took a weekend off 

from working out details about county seats, 

county lines, and a new constitution. While in 

Claremore, citizens joined in his jubilation over 

agreement that Claremore would be the county 

seat. When Rogers returned to Guthrie, other 

constitutional convention members discovered 

it was Rogers’ sixty-eighth birthday—he was the 

oldest delegate at the convention. For a birthday 

Right: Cadets from the Oklahoma 

Military Academy practiced their 

marching skills along Main Street in 

Claremore every Saturday, photo 

c. the early 1940s. 


present, delegates decided to call the new 

county Rogers County. 

Two months after the county was named, The 

Daily Oklahoman highlighted the area, writing, 

“Containing the rich farms of the Verdigris 

valley, Rogers County…has a population of 

15,000 and property valued at $3 million. 

Splendid farms form most of the 

wealth and produce abundant 

crops of hay, grain, and fruit. 

Some cotton is also raised.” 

Oklahoma became the 

forty-sixth state on 

November 16, 1907. 

County officers in 

Claremore were sworn 

in after word was 

received from Guthrie 

that President Theodore 

Roosevelt had signed 

the proclamation officially 

declaring statehood. During the 

afternoon, a part of the statehood celebration, 

Claremore’s high school football team 

defeated the squad from Nowata 25-0. 

In 1909 the Oklahoma legislature, pushed 

by Rogers County state representative C. W. 

Wortman, authorized 

the establishment of 

a university preparatory 

school at Claremore. 

The bill stipulated that 

Claremore furnish thirty-five 

acres for the school. Classes of the 

Eastern University Preparatory School, 

otherwise called the State University School, 

began in the old Claremont building in 1909 

and moved into the new domed building the 

following year. 

❖ 

Above: The Oklahoma Military 

Academy opened in Claremore in 

1919 and was regarded as the “West 

Point of the Southwest.” Thousands of 

graduates proudly wore the Academy’s 

patch, which heralded “courage, 

loyalty, honor.” This aerial view of the 

campus was taken in the early 1940s. 

Though the Academy closed in 1971, 

today it is the home of Rogers 

State University. 

Left: Rogers State University (RSU), 

originally the home of the Oklahoma 

Military Academy, now houses a 

historical museum dedicated to the 

academy. The legacy of the Oklahoma 

Military Academy and its esteemed 

graduates is carried on by the 

Oklahoma Military Academy Alumni 

Association and the Oklahoma 

Military Academy Museum, a major 

tourist attraction located on the 

second floor of Meyer Hall at RSU 

in Claremore. 


Chapter II ✦ 17

❖ 

Left: John Monroe Davis (1887-1974) 

came to Claremore in 1916 to operate 

the Mason Hotel. The hotel soon 

housed numerous items from Davis’ 

extensive collection of guns, knives, 

swords, steins, saddles, music boxes, 

musical instruments, political buttons, 

World War I posters, John Rogers 

statuary, and Native American 

artifacts. A major landmark along 

Route 66, the collection was leased to 

the State of Oklahoma at the cost of 

$1 for 99 years. The state also agreed 

to build and maintain a modern 

facility to house the collection, open to 

the public at no charge. This portrait 

of Mr. Davis was painted by famed 

Oklahoma artist, Charles 

Banks Wilson. 

Right: Bushyhead native Senator Clem 

McSpadden served as the master of 

ceremonies at the official opening of 

the J. M. Davis Gun Museum in 

Claremore on June 27, 1969. U.S. 

Senator Henry Bellmon and 

Oklahoma Governor Dewey Bartlett 

were also present for the opening. The 

museum includes over 50,000 

artifacts and houses over 13,000 guns 

in the world’s largest private 

gun collection. 

The prep school survived until 1917 

when Governor Robert L. Williams vetoed 

appropriations to continue its operations. In 

1919, the legislature voted to turn the 

abandoned school grounds into the Oklahoma 

Military Academy (OMA) with Stephen M. 

Barrett, former president of the Eastern 

University Prep School, as commander. 

OMA offered secondary and collegiate 

education from 1923 to 1971. More than ten 

thousand students graduated from the school. 

Among the graduates of the academy is retired 

Lieutenant General William E. Potts, one of the 

most decorated soldiers in the U.S. Army. 

Nearly one hundred OMA alumni died while 

serving their country in the armed forces in 

World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam 

War. During its heyday, OMA was hailed as the 

West Point of the Southwest. The OMA Museum 

collects, preserves, and exhibits items relevant 

to the school’s history. 

In 1971 the legislature replaced OMA with 

a two-year school known as Claremore 

Junior College. In 1982 it became Rogers State 

College, in honor of Clem Rogers. In 1996, 

Rogers State College and the University Center 

at Tulsa merged to form Rogers University, 

with campuses in Claremore and Tulsa. In 1998 

the legislature separated the two and, in 2000, 

the Claremore campus was renamed Rogers 

State University. 

Cherokee historian Emmett Starr published 

the heralded Cherokees “West,” 1794-1839 in 

1910. Starr, who grew up on a farm near 

Claremore, attended the Cherokee Male 

Seminary and began collecting Cherokee 

documents in the 1890s. His History of the 

Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folklore 

was published in 1922 and still is prized by 

Cherokee historians and genealogists. 

In 1916, Oklahoma’s first toll road was 

built in Rogers County by private businessmen. 

It extended twenty-one miles from Chelsea to 

Claremore on the route that eventually became 

Route 66. Toll gates were constructed at 

Chelsea, Bushyhead, and Foyil. Agitated drivers 

began driving around the toll gates until 

operators scattered tacks on the adjacent right of 

way. Several fights broke out and one toll booth 

was burned. The county took over operation of 

the toll road in 1919, paying the private owners 

$55,000 for the stretch of road. 

John Monroe “J. M.” Davis took over 

management of the Mason Hotel in Claremore 

in 1917 for which he had traded two thousand 


acres of property in Arkansas. He began 

collecting guns at the age of seven and 

continued to collect firearms from all over the 

world, amassing the world’s largest private 

firearms collection. The collection contained a 

five-hundred-year-old Chinese hand cannon 

and the world’s smallest automatic pistol. The 

lobby walls of the hotel became crowded, so did 

the hotel ballroom as knives, swords, saddles, 

Indian artifacts, political buttons, and movie 

posters filled the walls and lined hallways. 

In 1965, Davis transferred ownership of the 

collection to a trust, the J. M. Davis Foundation, 

Inc. The foundation entered into a relationship 

with the State of Oklahoma to preserve and 

display the collection. In 1969 the J. M. Davis 

Arms & Historical Museum opened to the public 

on Davis’ eighty-second birthday. It contained 

more than fifty thousand historical artifacts. 

Will Rogers, long a star of vaudeville with the 

Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, went west to 

Hollywood in 1919. He made forty-nine silent 

films before he appeared in his first talking movie, 

They Had to See Paris, in 1929. Will was a busy 

man. He wrote several books and a daily column 

that was syndicated in 450 newspapers. He was a 

much-sought-after dinner speaker and the most 

popular humorist in the world. He was one of the 

highest paid radio performers of his time. 

Will was quoted by everyone from the 

President of the United States to a janitor in the 

local schoolhouse. He never forgot his Rogers 

County roots. In an article about New York 

City and its crowds, he wrote, “It looked like 

my hometown of Claremore on a Saturday 

afternoon.” When Will listed “big cities” he was 

visiting in the world, he said, “Rome, Paris, 

Talala, Bushyhead, and London.” Many of his 

readers thought Will made up the names, but 

his neighbors in Rogers County knew better. 

In 1926, Cyrus Avery, a Tulsa businessman 

and promoter of good roads, spearheaded a 

national committee that championed a Chicago 

to Los Angeles route through Oklahoma. 

It would become Route 66, the double sixes 

chosen by Avery to designate the federal 

❖ 

The Cadet Theater on Main Street in 

Claremore, c. 1950s. 

Chapter II ✦ 19

❖ 

This classic life-sized portrait of Will 

Rogers was painted by famous 

Oklahoma artist Charles Banks 

Wilson in 1963. Commissioned by the 

State of Oklahoma for permanent 

display, the original portrait stands in 

the rotunda of Oklahoma’s state 

capitol building in Oklahoma City. 

Wilson was only thirteen when he first 

sketched a portrait of Will Rogers 

backstage at the historic Coleman 

Theatre in Miami, Oklahoma, in 

1931 as Will was there performing in 

a drought relief tour. Wilson greatly 

admired Oklahoma’s favorite son and 

once said, “Will Rogers saw no 

difference between the king and the 

common working man—the things of 

life are the same to both.” 


highway. The Mother Road inspired songs and 

poems and created a great part of American 

folklore. Oklahoma has more miles of original 

Route 66 roadbed left than any other state. 

Its history is kept alive by the Oklahoma Route 

66 Association. 

In 1928 the Route 66 Association and 

a promoter, C. C. Pyle, came up with a 

promotional idea for a footrace from Los Angeles 

to New York City, along the twenty-fourhundred 

miles of Route 66 and beyond. Andy 

Payne, a twenty-year-old Cherokee resident of 

Foyil signed up for the race—he wanted the 

$25,000 first prize to save his family farm. Andy 

❖ 

Top, left: Andy Payne Park, located at 

Foyil, pays tribute to Andrew Hartley 

Payne (1907-1977). Payne graduated 

from Foyil High School and served for 

36 years as Clerk of the Oklahoma 

Supreme Court. He was best known 

as the legendary winner of the Great 

Continental Footrace, which began in 

Los Angeles on March 4, 1928, and 

ended 3,422.3 miles later in New 

York City on May 26, 1928. 


Left: A 1970 brochure from 

KWPR Radio. 

Below: Dedicated on February 7, 

1930, the Will Rogers Hotel was 

constructed and furnished at a cost of 

$321,000. The six-story hotel 

included seventy-eight rooms, seven 

apartments, and a suite for 

Will Rogers. 

Chapter II ✦ 21

had graduated from Foyil High School the 

previous year. Legend has it that he practiced for 

the race by running ten miles each day back and 

forth from Foyil to his home. 

Nearly 300 runners began the grueling 

odyssey on March 4, 1928. Payne outdistanced 

his competition and won the race, fondly called 

“The Bunion Derby” by reporters. He finished 

the race in Madison Square Garden, collected 

his $25,000, and returned home to Foyil and 

married his sweetheart. Later, Payne served as 

Clerk of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Today, 

Andy’s statue stands on the south side of Foyil 

by Route 66. 

The fireproof Will Rogers Hotel was 

dedicated in Claremore on February 7, 1930. It 

was built by Morton Harrison of Claremore and 

two other men for $321,000. It became the 

showplace of the town and showed its 

hospitality to everyone from its namesake to 

comedian Bob Hope. Will was in St. Louis on 

February 14, 1930, when he wrote, “Flying to 

Claremore and run into a snowstorm here and 

got set down…” He then continued his journey 

by train to the home of his sister, Mrs. Tom 

McSpadden, at Chelsea. 

Upon his arrival in Claremore on February 

15, 1930, a local newspaper reporter wrote that 

he “ate his dinner…at the Hotel Will Rogers… 

to Claremore via his farm and birthplace at 

Oologah…viewed the oil painting of his 

father…Will Rogers was wearing his hat as he 

stepped up the three steps to the foot of the 

picture and looked on to the canvas. He 

uncovered and gave the painting close study 

and then turned to remark to his sister: ‘It 

is a very good likeness. It’s just fine.’ Mrs. 

McSpadden drove him to the municipal airport 

in Tulsa, where his plane, the private ship of 

Erle P. Halliburton, was awaiting him…and flew 

to Fort Worth in mid-afternoon.” 


Will later wrote about the six-story hotel, 

“That’s higher than any hotel in London and 

it’s got more baths in one room than 

Buckingham Palace, where the king lives, has all 

put together. Got more elevators than the Rice 

Hotel in Houston had during the Democratic 

convention, and these run.” 

Will was proud the hotel was named for him. 

He said, “I know how proud Christopher 

Columbus must have felt when he had heard 

they had named Columbus, Ohio, after him.” 

“I was more proud to see my name in electric 

lights in my old home town,” Will wrote, “than 

I ever was to see my name in bright lights on 

the biggest theatre on Broadway.” The hotel 

now is the Will Rogers Apartments, a senior 

community housing development. It was 

renovated by the Rogers County Historical 

Society, Community Action Resource and 

Development, and another partner in 1997, 

and is listed on the National Register of 

Historic Places. 

Claremore got its first post office in 1935, a 

building now used as the federal building. All 

prior post offices had occupied rental space. 

However the biggest news of 1935 was the 

death of Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post in 

Alaska on August 15, 1935. It was one of the 

biggest news stories of all time. Will had become 

one of the world’s most famous men. When 

news of the crash reached Washington, D.C., 

Congress adjourned for the day. 

Almost immediately, plans were laid to 

memorialize Will. More than a year before his 

❖ 

Opposite, left: This statue of Will 

Rogers, Never Met a Man I Didn’t 

Like, was sculpted by Jo Davidson 

and stands in the Will Rogers 

Memorial Museum. The heroic statue 

was cast twice, with one copy in the 

Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., 

and the other in the rotunda of the 

museum in Claremore. In conjunction 

with the Oklahoma governor’s 

industrial advisory board, a ten-inch 

copy of this Davidson statue was 

executed during the 1990s by 

Oklahoma sculptor John Gooden. The 

Oklahoma governor uses the copy as 

a state gift. 


Opposite, right: The Will Rogers 

Memorial Museum includes the 

Rogers’ family tomb here in the 

sunken garden. The 16,652-squarefoot 

museum includes eight galleries 

and was built of fossilized limestone. 

The east wing was added in 1982 

using additional legislative 

appropriations. In the 1990s, the 

entire museum was remodeled with 

$3 million in private and public 

funds. The twenty-acre museum 

grounds, purchased by Will Rogers in 

1911 for $500 an acre, was his 

planned retirement home site. After 

his death in 1938, Will’s widow and 

children donated the land and many 

unique artifacts which today remain 

part of the world’s largest collection of 

documents related to Will Rogers. 


Above and below: Featuring that 

“Eastern atmosphere, Western 

welcome, and Southern hospitality,” 

this Hotel Will Rogers brochure from 

the early 1940s gives a vivid 

description of the benefits of 

Claremore’s famous radium water 

baths and massages on the top floor of 

the hotel—“where the world bathes its 

way to health.” 

Chapter II ✦ 23

❖ 

Top, right: Levi Harlan served as the 

bath attendant at the Hotel Will 

Rogers when he posed for this 

photograph in 1986. On the left are 

the tubs and on the right are 

cooling cots. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OKLAHOMAN. 

Bottom, right: The official dedication 

and opening of the Will Rogers 

Memorial Museum in Claremore was 

held on November 4, 1938, the 

anniversary of Will Rogers’ birthday. 

The land, originally owned by the 

Rogers family, was donated to the 

Memorial Commission by Betty 

Rogers and construction of the 

museum began on April 21, 1938. 

The November 4, 1938, dedication 

was broadcast nationwide on NBC 

and included remarks by U.S. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 

Hyde Park in New York. 

Below: Throngs of visitors look on as a 

choir sings at center stage during 

ceremonies of the grand opening of the 

Will Rogers Memorial Museum in 

Claremore in the fall of 1938. 


death, Will donated lots on the corner of Second 

and Missouri streets to be sold for the post 

office, but directed that the money be used for a 

municipal library. Will wanted it named for 

Sequoyah or some other prominent Cherokee, 

but citizens insisted the new library be called 

the Will Rogers Memorial Library. 

At the edge of Claremore was a twentyacre 

plot that Will had often mentioned as the 

place where he would like to retire someday. 

Will’s wife, Betty, donated the land where the 

Will Rogers Memorial now stands. John Duncan 

Forsyth designed the memorial made from rock 

quarried in northeast Oklahoma. In 1944 the 

remains of Will, his wife, and their two-year-old 

son were placed in a sunken garden tomb at 

the memorial. 

Will had always said, “I don’t worry about 

when the lights of New York and Hollywood 

grow dim. I’m from Claremore, and I always 

have a home to go back to.” 


CHAPTER III 

C ONTINUING THE T RADITION 

Rogers County did not have a county courthouse for its first thirty-four years. Before 1941 county 

officers conducted business from offices on the second floor of downtown Claremore business buildings. 

Finally a bond issue was approved to construct the courthouse that was dedicated on March 17, 1941. 

In 1943, Oklahoma, the musical, opened on Broadway to much applause and great acclaim. 

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s play was set in Claremore and was inspired by 

Claremore’s Lynn Riggs. In 1931, Riggs, a major contributor to American theatre during the Great 

Depression, produced Green Grow the Lilacs, a Broadway play based upon the music and life of Indian 

Territory. It was Riggs’ play that Rodgers and Hammerstein turned into a different kind of musical. 

Hammerstein later wrote, “Lynn Riggs and Green Grow the Lilacs are the very soul of Oklahoma.” 

The musical produced Oklahoma’s state song. 

Residents of Claremore were aware of teenager Clara Anne Fowler’s incredible voice in the 1940s. 

Clara, the daughter of a railroad worker, began singing on Tulsa radio stations and changed her name 

to Patti Page, in honor of the show’s sponsor, Page Milk Company. She embarked on a singing career 

that lasted more than 50 years and recorded 130 albums in a variety of genres from pop and jazz to 

country and religious, winning a Grammy Award for a 1999 performance at Carnegie Hall. She was 

the most popular female singer in the 1950s, selling more than one hundred million records. 

Rogers County continued its tradition of producing strong political leaders in the second half of 

the twentieth century. In 1955, Clem McSpadden was elected state senator and served Oklahoma in 

a variety ways. He also was perhaps the nation’s best known rodeo announcer. Upon Clem’s death in 

2008, a newspaper reporter wrote, “Clem was an Oklahoman through and through, no matter where 

his boots carried him—the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., as a congressman; the Calgary 

Stampede as a rodeo announcer; or the bluestem country of northeastern Oklahoma, the place he 

called home.” 

❖ 

The centerpiece of Claremore’s Lynn 

Riggs Museum, the “surrey with the 

fringe on top,” was originally used in 

the Broadway production of 

Oklahoma! The musical classic was 

adapted by Richard Rodgers and 

Oscar Hammerstein in 1943 from the 

1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs by 

Rogers County native Rollie Lynn 

Riggs. Born to William and Rose Ella 

on August 31, 1899, Riggs’ 

grandparents built their home three 

miles southwest of Claremore in 1878. 

When Lynn was six years old, the 

family moved to a new two-story 

house on Eleventh Street in Claremore 

and he graduated from Eastern 

University Preparatory School (now 

Rogers State University) in 1917. 

Nominated twice for the Pulitzer 

Prize, Lynn Riggs remained a prolific 

playwright and poet throughout his 

life and was inducted into the 

Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1949. 

He passed away in 1954 and is 

buried in Claremore. 


Chapter III ✦ 25

❖ 

Right: Claremore native Lynn Riggs 

walks the grounds of Yaddo, an artists’ 

community founded in 1900 and 

located on a four-hundred-acre estate 

in Saratoga Springs, New York. 

PHOTO COURTESY WESTERN HISTORY 

COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA. 

Below: The El Sueno Motor Court was 

Claremore’s first motel and was 

located on old Route 66. It was built 

in 1938. Jack and Christine Sibley 

and their son Gary lived there and 

managed the courts. 

Other state legislators from 

Rogers County who established 

themselves as statewide 

leaders were Senators Robert 

Wadley, Bill Crutcher, and 

Stratton Taylor. Taylor was 

first elected to the Oklahoma 

House of Representatives in 

1978, but later moved to the 

State Senate where he became 

President Pro Tempore. 

Apollo 14 Astronaut Stuart 

Roosa moved with his family 

to Claremore and attended 

Justus Elementary School and 

Claremore High School before 

he began active duty in 

the U.S. Air Force in 1953. 

Colonel Roosa was one of the 

nineteen astronauts selected 

by the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration 

(NASA) in April 1966 and 

served as a member of the 

support crew for the Apollo 9 

flight. His first space flight 

occurred on January 31, 1971, 

with the Apollo 14 mission, 

man’s third lunar landing 

mission. Roosa served as 

backup command pilot for 

the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, 

and was assigned to the 

space shuttle program until 

his retirement in 1976. At his 

death in 1994, former NASA 

chief Daniel Goldin said, 

“Stuart Roosa was one of the ‘can-do’ spacefarers 

that helped take America and all humankind to 

the moon.” 

The idea of making the Arkansas and Verdigris 

rivers navigable had been talked about since 1943 

when Governor Robert S. Kerr envisioned a flood 

control and navigation system via the two rivers 

that would link Catoosa with the Mississippi 

River and the Gulf of Mexico. Working with 

Arkansas U.S. Senator John McClellan, Kerr 

succeeded in getting Congress to authorize the 

project. When Kerr was elected to the U.S. Senate 

in 1948, he made the navigation system his 

primary legislative goal. 


When completed in 1970, the McClellan-Kerr 

Navigation Project was, at a total cost of $1.2 

billion, the largest public works project ever 

completed by the federal government except for 

the Panama Canal and the space program. The 

445-mile channel requires eighteen locks and 

dams and three lakes in Oklahoma and thirteen in 

Arkansas to stabilize the water flow in the channel. 

The first commercial barge, carrying about 

650 tons of newsprint, arrived at the Port of 

Catoosa on January 18, 1971. At the dedication 

of the project, President Richard Nixon said: 

One day in 1923, Will Rogers was spoofing 

Congress about its public works spending. 

He made his point by saying that with all the 

money being passed out that he could probably 

even expect to get a harbor built on the Verdigris 

River at Oologah. 

Well, this magnificent new port is still 

a few miles downstream from Oologah, but 

it’s close enough that this time the Corps 

of Engineers and the people of the 

supposedly landlocked Sooner State can 

have the last laugh. 

The navigation project has been well 

worth the record expenditure. The system 

has saved billions of dollars in flood 

damage, created hydroelectric power, and 

created a recreational boon for several 

areas in two states. In 2008 the system 

carried nearly fourteen million tons of 

cargo. The Port of Catoosa offers some of 

the nation’s most cost effective ice-free 

waterway transportation options, with a 

full complement of railroads, highway, and 

air freight systems. 

In 1975 the Claremore Indian Hospital 

was built as part of the nation’s Indian Health 

Service system. Originally established in the 

early 1929-1930s, the formal opening was 

August 2-3, 1930. Today the facility annually 

serves nearly 2,000 patients, delivers 300 

babies, and performs hundreds of surgeries. 

In addition to in-patient service, nearly two 

hundred thousand outpatient visits occur at 

the Claremore Service Unit each year. The 

unit encompasses twelve counties and serves 

a large Indian population mostly from the 

Cherokee and Creek tribes. 

In 2004, construction was completed on 

a $15 million project to alleviate overcrowding 

at the Claremore Regional Hospital. The 

eighteen-thousand-square-foot surgery center 

includes two surgical suites. In addition to the 

outpatient surgery center, a thirty-thousandsquare-foot 

medical office building was 

constructed on the hospital campus. 

❖ 

Above: Patti Page Boulevard runs 

through downtown Claremore. 

Below: Born Clara Ann Fowler in 

1927 in Claremore, Grammy-award 

winning singer and American musical 

icon Patti Page was inducted into the 

Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1983. 

Throughout her career she recorded 

over 100 albums, released 160 

singles, and was honored with 84 Top 

40 Billboard hits. Among her most 

famous songs are “Mockin’ Bird Hill” 

and “Tennessee Waltz.” 


Chapter III ✦ 27

❖ 

Top: When the United States Bureau 

of Indian Affairs first built the Indian 

Hospital in Claremore, it was 

regarded as “The Government’s only 

hospital serving those of the Five 

Civilized Tribes” and was built at a 

cost of $300,000. Today, the facility 

continues to provide outstanding 

medical care to Native Americans. 

Center: This detailed photo was taken 

at the intersection of Route 66, which 

ran one block west of the intersection 

at the time of the picture, and 

Highway 20 in downtown Claremore 

in the 1950s and includes the Mason 

Hotel and the historic Hotel Will 

Rogers. The Mason Hotel was built by 

Dr. John Rucker in 1910 and included 

116 rooms and a coffee shop. 

Below: An aerial view of the largest 

inland port in the United States, 

the Port of Catoosa, an inland 

international seaport and twothousand-acre 

industrial park located 

at the head of navigation for the 

McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River 

Navigation System. The system 

stretches 445 miles from Catoosa to 

the Mississippi River and travels 

along the Verdigris, Arkansas and 

White rivers. In 2008 the Port was 

home to nearly 70 companies 

employing nearly 4,000 people. 


Today, Rogers State University (RSU) is one 

of Oklahoma’s fastest growing universities. In 

2006, the newly built Stratton Taylor Library 

was named a federal depository library, the 

twentieth such designation in the state. RSU 

offers bachelor’s degrees in fifteen areas. The 

university is a pioneer in online and distance 

learning through eCollege, compressed video 

courses, and telecourses. 

RSU’s television station, KRSC-TV 35, is the 

only full-powered public station licensed to a 

public university in the state. It broadcasts 

cultural and educational programs to more than 

one million residents of northeastern Oklahoma. 

Rogers County continues to experience 

phenomenal growth. In 2007, the U.S. Census 

Bureau tabbed the county as the fastest growing 

county in the state between 2000 and 2006. 

Rogers County grew by seventeen percent with 

❖ 

Left: Commemorated in the stellar 

Oklahomans in Space exhibit at the 

Oklahoma History Center, Stuart 

Roosa was born in Colorado in 1933 

and moved with his family to 

Claremore in 1941 and graduated 

from Claremore High School. He was 

selected by NASA as an astronaut for 

several of the historic Apollo missions 

and the City of Claremore named a 

street and an elementary school in his 

honor. He passed away in December 

of 1994 and is buried in Arlington 

National Cemetery. 

Below: Senator Clem McSpadden, 

whose paternal great grandfather was 

Clem Rogers, walks along main street 

in Chelsea. Clem and his wife Donna 

lived in Chelsea where they were 

active in church, civic, and 

community. Their ranch is in the 

Bushyhead community, of which a 

portion is the original land settled by 

his grandparents in 1885. Though 

Clem died in 2008, Donna remains 

active in the Chelsea community 

today and maintains the Bushyhead 

ranch, their Chelsea office, and 

properties. Regarding his long career 

in politics, McSpadden once said, “In 

1955, I was elected to the Oklahoma 

State Senate. Looking back, it’s good 

young men and women look at the 

total picture of politics and realize it 

isn’t always the most personally 

rewarding, but the reward comes in 

learning there are ways and means to 

make life and living better for those 

who truly need a spokesman.” 


Chapter III ✦ 29

❖ 

Right: Ernie Smart, a sports writer for 

the Claremore Daily Progress and 

contributor to the sports section of the 

Tulsa World, was also the owner and 

operator of Ernie’s Pool Hall 

in Claremore. 

Below: The Robson Performing Arts 

Center, a state-of-the-art facility 

serving the city and its public school’s 

fine arts programs, opened in 

Claremore in 2006. Frank and 

Ludmilla Robson, the $16-million 

center’s primary benefactors, donated 

the facility to the Claremore public 

school system. The center contains a 

black box theater, an eleven-hundredseat 

main theater, and numerous 

facilities for band, chorus, and other 

performing arts classes. It also hosts 

professional performances for the 

community throughout the year. 

an estimated population of 82,435. Experts 

reasoned that with the metropolitan area of 

Tulsa nearby, residents were looking for a 

small-town feel within easy driving distance of 

the big city. 

Not only are Rogers County numbers 

growing, its residents are making more money. 

With the abundance of good jobs and 

opportunities, Rogers County had an average 

household income of $47,821 in 2005, second 

only to Canadian County. The Rogers County 

income level was more than $10,000 above the 

national average. 

In 2008, Claremore city leaders unveiled a 

plan to build a $110-million lifestyle center, the 

largest private investment ever made in the 

county. The first phase, called Oklahoma Plaza, 

will include 625,000 square feet of retail 

and office space, a movie theater, a hotel, and 

several restaurants. Future plans also include 

residential space for 225 single-family homes 

and an apartment complex. 

Today, the historic heritage of Rogers County 

remains as vibrant as ever. One of the county’s 

most prolific authors, Dr. Noel Kaho, memorialized 

its legacy in 1941—“[It is] a place unlike 

any other in the whole world. It is filled with 

richness and true character. It is alive. And it 

looks upon the days of its international fame as 

a nobleman might remember his first youthful 

trip abroad. The accents are not upon the past 

but upon the future. It is old in name and being, 

but it is new in spirit. It looks very young to be 

so old; and quite grown up to be so young.” 


CHAPTER IV 

O THER P LACES W E C ALL H OME 

BUSHYHEAD 

A post office was established four miles southwest of Chelsea on April 18, 1898, and called 

Bushyhead. It was named for Dennis W. Bushyhead, chief of the Cherokees, who came to Indian 

Territory in 1839. The settlers who made their home in the area requested that the post office be 

named for the Cherokee chief who served from 1879 to 1887 and was concerned about the 

individual rights of Cherokees. 

Bushyhead was the birthplace of congressman, state senator, and world-renowned rodeo 

announcer Clem McSpadden. At the age of two, Clem moved with his parents, Herb & Madalyn 

McSpadden, to the Rogers Ranch at Oologah where Herb managed the ranch for his Uncle Will. After 

his discharge from the U.S. Navy, Clem completed his degree from Oklahoma A&M and was elected 

to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1955 as its youngest member. He served until 1972, being elected 

twice by his peers to the office of President Pro Tempore, an historic first in the Oklahoma Senate. 

Elected to the U.S. Congress in 1972, Clem was the first, first-term freshman ever to serve on the 

prestigious Rules Committee. 

Clem was best known across the United States as the “voice of rodeo” for more that thirty-five 

years, including Hawaii, Canada and Mexico, and served as color announcer for ABC Wide World of 

Sports, and TNN. He was in several movies and was a popular voice of TV and radio commercials 

and was active in the formation of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. In March 

2008 Clem was named the first recipient of the “Lifetime Achievement Award” presented by the 

Claremore Progress. 

❖ 

This historical marker along Route 66 

at Catoosa memorializes a stop along 

the Old Star Mail Route that ran 

between St. Louis and California. 


Chapter III ✦ 31

❖ 

Right: Catoosa’s Historical Society and 

Museum also includes this original 

mail box and mail cart. The box on 

the left was opened from the top as 

mail on Catoosa’s first rural route was 

delivered by horseback. The cart on 

the right was used at the Catoosa 

depot, which closed in May 1962. 


Below: Oklahoma’s own 

Clem McSpadden. 

When Clem died in 2008, country music 

superstar Reba McEntire was among twenty-five 

hundred people at the memorial service at the same 

ranch where McSpadden was born. McSpadden 

paid McEntire $10 to sing the national anthem at 

the 1974 National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. 

McEntire was a student at Southeastern Oklahoma 

State University at the time. 

The Bushyhead post office closed on 

November 15, 1955. However, the ranching tradition 

of the area lives on in the Clem McSpadden 

Bushyhead Labor Day Pasture Roping and Barrel 

Race. The event began in 1983 and is the only 

sustained roping contest of its kind in America. 

The roping and racing events are similar to a 

traditional rodeo except for the size of the arena. 

The contests are held on a 120-acre sloping 

pasture. The barrel race is half a mile, three times 

the normal distance in a rodeo arena. 

CATOOSA 

Shortly after the Atlantic and Pacific 

Railroad, later the St. Louis and San Francisco 

Railway, laid tracks to an area in southwestern 

Rogers County fourteen miles northeast of Tulsa 

in 1882, the community of Catoosa was born. 

For several years, a small group of people lived 

in the lowlands east of the present town in an 

area known as Fort Spunky. Spring floods often 

covered the land, so the people looked for 

higher ground, settling in the present location of 

Cherokee and Denbo streets. 

Settlers named the town for nearby Catoos 

Hill. The word comes from the Cherokee, 

gatv gitse, meaning “new settlement place.” 

Ranching made Catoosa a prominent cow town 

in the final years of the nineteenth century. 

William Halsell, on his Bird Creek Ranch, and 

other ranchers anchored the local economy. 

A post office was established on March 27, 

1883. John Schrimsher was the first postmaster. 

As settlers began to make new homes in 

nearby Tulsa, or Tulsey Town, lumber from 

forests around Catoosa made its way to the new 

neighborhoods. For many years, the only way to 

cross the Verdigris River was at a “ford” or by 

swimming by horseback. However, just before 

the turn of the twentieth century, Jim and Bill 

Wofford built and operated the Wofford Ferry. 


❖ 

Left: Catoosa’s Historical Society and 

Museum includes numerous old 

pictures and artifacts relating to 

Catoosa’s history, such as a mailbox 

that was used when mail was 

delivered on horseback, a train depot 

log book from 1897, and a check from 

the Farmers and Merchants Bank 

dated 1907. The exhibit in this photo 

pays tribute to the famous singing 

cowboy, Gene Autry. Legend has it 

that before he received his big break in 

movies, local residents could listen to 

him play his guitar and sing on the 

old freight dock at the Catoosa depot. 

Also pictured is a working replica of a 

late 1800s cash register similar to 

those used in Catoosa’s early 

mercantile stores and a ticket cabinet 

from Catoosa’s original depot. 


The population of Catoosa in 1900 was 241. 

The people were served by a hotel, a 

lumberyard, a single lawyer, two blacksmiths, 

three drugstores, two doctors, and six general 

stores. The United States Department of the 

Interior approved a plat of Catoosa in March 

1902. J. Gus Patton certified the survey and 

staked the town as the Town of Catoosa, 

Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory. 

A few years after statehood, the town’s 

population increased with the addition of a 

bank, marble works, and a grain elevator. 

Early newspapers included the Catoosa Eagle, 

Catoosa Hornet, Catoosa Gazette, Catoosan, 

Below: The Verdigris River, separating 

Claremore from Catoosa, was crossed 

by horseback until 1908, when the 

Wofford brothers built this ferry. 

Standing on the ferry is Jim Wofford, 

his wife Bessie, and their daughter 

Clara. The ferry was operated along 

the river until a horse bridge was built 

in 1914. 

Chapter III ✦ 33

Catoosa Courier, and Catoosa Star. It was a 

typical cowtown, with frequent visits by early 

day wild west adventurers. Many of the 

outlaws who passed through Catoosa were on 

their way to hideouts in Rascal Flats, an 

interesting piece of land where the Port of 

Catoosa is now located. 

In addition to farming and ranching, strip 

coal mining provided jobs for residents. In 

1912 the McNabb brothers began digging for 

coal along Coal Creek with horses, mules, and 

a steam shovel. The Great Depression reduced 

Catoosa’s population by one-fourth, but 

business along Route 66 picked up after World 

War II and the population began to grow again. 

In 1960, Catoosa’s population was 638. 

Three major fires wiped out much of the 

downtown area of Catoosa in 1929. Catoosa was 

no longer the railhead for the Frisco because the 

line had been extended to Tulsa. It was tough 

for Catoosa to rebuild, and the downtown 

area never recovered. The remaining buildings 

eventually were either destroyed by fire or 

became unusable. In 1954 a city hall was 

purchased and plans were completed to build 

the first city water and sewer system. 

As nearby Tulsa expanded industrially, 

Catoosa became a bedroom community in the 

1960s and ’70s. In 1971 the town received an 

economic transfusion with the opening of 

the Port of Catoosa at the northern end of the 

McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation 

System. President Richard Nixon came to 

Catoosa to dedicate the port and the navigation 

project in June 1971. The Port of Catoosa is the 

largest inland seaport in the United States. 

The Port of Catoosa has seen tremendous 

growth. By 1986, 15 million tons of freight had 

traveled through the port’s 2,000-acre industrial 

park that was home to 50 businesses employing 

more than 1,200 people. By 2008 the industrial 

complex provided jobs for nearly 3,000 workers 

and handled more than two million tons of 

cargo each year. 

For many years, the Blue Whale, a local 

landmark, was part of a roadside attraction along 

Route 66 known as the ARK, the Animal and 

Reptile Kingdom. The waterpark was the idea 

of Hugh Davis, director of the Mohawk Zoo in 

Tulsa. When Davis retired, he gave up having 

alligators in ponds, and built the Blue Whale, 

using 126 sacks of dry Portland concrete and 

$5.75 to tack down the original wood decking. 

The park closed in 1980 but the Catoosa 

Chamber of Commerce led an effort to 

recondition the concrete whale. One company 

❖ 

Route 66 is well-known for its 

landmark Blue Whale at Catoosa. 

Once opened for swimming, the 

famous site was built by former Tulsa 

Zoo curator and Catoosa resident 

Hugh Davis as a wedding anniversary 

gift for his wife Zelta in 1972. Though 

the whale was originally built for 

private use by the Davis family, local 

children began sneaking in to swim at 

the site so Davis decided to build 

concrete tables and chairs, even hiring 

a lifeguard, and the water park soon 

became a regional attraction and a 

Route 66 icon. 


spent $6,000 in whale refurbishing. Former 

Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating even helped 

paint the icon along the Mother Road. 

With the influx of new jobs, the population 

of Catoosa exceeded six thousand in 2008. More 

than two thousand students were enrolled in 

Catoosa public schools, making it the largest 

school district in the state in Class 5A. 

Catoosa has new schools, business and 

industrial centers, a new city hall, library, and 

community center. The Catoosa Historical 

Society chose the design of the original train 

depot as a model for its new building because of 

the railroad’s importance to the growth and 

development of the city. Historical photographs 

and artifacts are displayed in the depot, 

including a depot log book dating back to 1897. 

A caboose, donated by Burlington Northern 

Railroad, is located on the north side of the depot. 

Chelsea’s economy was based on ranching, 

farming, and oil. In 1889 the U.S. Oil and Gas 

Company drilled the first well in what became 

the Chelsea-Alluwe field southwest of Chelsea. It 

was perhaps the first intentional oil well drilled in 

Indian Territory. The well was thirty-six feet deep 

and produced about a half-barrel of oil a day. It 

was never commercially viable, but it started 

something big. Local oil and gas production 

boomed and peaked during World War I. Before 

statehood in 1907, Chelsea was well known as a 

cattle-raising and hay-shipping center. Farmers 

raised corn, oats, wheat, and pecans. 

One of the town’s earliest industries was a 

flour mill built in 1892. The Bank of Chelsea, 

perhaps the first bank in Indian Territory, 

opened in March 1896. During the first years of 

the twentieth century, brick streets were laid in 

downtown Chelsea in the shape of a spoked 

❖ 

An early photo of Chelsea, looking 

west across downtown. 


CHELSEA 

Named for a town in England of the 

same name, Chelsea’s post office opened 

on November 21, 1882. The settlement in 

northeastern Rogers County was named by 

railroad official Charles Peach whose home 

was Chelsea, England. 

The town had begun the previous year as a 

stop on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, later 

the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway. Chelsea 

was incorporated under the laws of the Cherokee 

Nation in 1889. In 1902 the federal Townsite 

Commission surveyed and platted the town. 

wheel. Local newspapers were the Chelsea 

Commercial and the Reporter. 

Tom and Sallie Rogers McSpadden were 

married at the Clem Rogers Ranch on the 

Verdigris in 1890. They built “Maplewood” 

in Chelsea in 1892 where they raised eight 

children. Tom was the first president of the 

Bank of Chelsea. 

Several Sears Roebuck-constructed homes 

were located in the area. One, ordered by 

Abraham and Maria Enns, arrived by rail in 

nearby Inola and was assembled at the Enns 

farm southeast of town. Though it was 

destroyed in the 1980s, another still stands in 

Chapter III ✦ 35

Chelsea. The house on Olive Street was shipped 

by train from Chicago in 1913 and cost $1,300. 

Legend has it that it was in Chelsea that the 

career of one of America’s greatest movie stars 

was born. Gene Autry was a relief telegraph 

operator at Chelsea when Will Rogers 

encouraged him to become a professional 

entertainer. Autry sang on KVOO Radio in Tulsa 

and left for Chicago to become “Oklahoma’s 

Yodeling Cowboy” in the 1920s. He became the 

premier singing cowboy, starring in nearly 

ninety movies, and wrote unforgettable songs 

such as “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and 

“Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” 

By 2008, Chelsea had a population of more 

than 2,000 and 83 businesses. More than 1,000 

students were enrolled in the public schools. An 

FM radio station and a weekly newspaper, the 

Chelsea Reporter, kept residents informed. 

Famous residents of Chelsea include former 

Oklahoma Congressman, State Senator, and 

rodeo announcer Clem McSpadden, Admiral 

Joseph J. Clark, and New York Yankees star 

pitcher Ralph Terry. 

COLLINSVILLE 

The first jobs in what became Collinsville 

were in coal mines in a wild and unsettled 

territory that would be bartered over between 

counties at statehood. In 1888 a small group of 

pioneers built homes in Collinsville. Small 

businesses served coal miners and farmers 

producing crops from the fertile triangle made 

by the Caney and Verdigris rivers and Bird 

Creek. Coal was hauled in wagons to Oologah 

to a railroad siding, but Collinsville businessmen 

knew the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe 

Railway was extending its tracks south from 

Kansas and ultimately would come to the area. 

The original town of Collinsville was known 

as Collins when the post office opened on May 

26, 1897. Dr. R. E. Graham owned the original 

eighty-acre townsite created by the Dawes 

Commission. There are two stories about the 

origin of the name of Collinsville. One legend 

is that the town was named for a surveyor 

named Collins. The other account was the town 

was named for Dr. H. H. Collins who owned 

a post office in the present town of Owasso. 

Some oldtimers believed that the new town 


was named for Dr. Collins who had agreed 

to move his move post office to the new 

community. Collins’ first mayor, Charlie Taylor, 

changed the name of the town to Collinsville 

on June 16, 1898. 

The railroad finally came in 1899, but missed 

the original town of Collinsville by a mile. Some 

of the original buildings were dragged on 

rollers across the prairie to the new location. 

W. L. Wright established a weekly newspaper, 

the Collinsville News, with the first edition 

published on May 11, 1899. The newspaper was 

owned by the Wright family until 1987. W. B. 

Erwin owned the first business established in 

the community. 

Gas was discovered in the Collinsville area in 

the early 1900s, the beginning of years of 

increased oil and gas drilling activity. Coal 

continued to be harvested from shallow pits 

around the town. In coal boom times, more than 

200 tons of coal were shipped from the area 

each day. 

At statehood in 1907, Collinsville was 

located entirely in Rogers County. On August 

24, 1918, voters in Collinsville, by a vote of 

1,828 to 8, overwhelmingly approved their 

annexation to Tulsa County. 

While Collinsville was still in Rogers County, 

industrial growth came to the area. In 1911 the 

Bartlesville Zinc Company constructed the 

world’s largest zinc smelter on the south edge of 

town. The rich farmland outside town produced 

bumper crops of wheat and oats. Two grain 

elevators joined the growing number of 

commercial buildings rising into the prairie sky. 

FOYIL 

Located ten miles northeast of Claremore, 

Foyil is named for the town’s first postmaster, 

Alfred Foyil. The post office opened on June 5, 

1890. The town was developed on farm land 

owned by Mr. Foyil who also owned the 

general store. By 1898 the town had a drug 

store, and a bank was added in 1905. The 

town was originally incorporated in 1905 with 

an estimated population of 150. 

In 1911, Foyil had a hotel, bank, two 

blacksmiths, a carpenter, barber shop, three 

general stores, two physicians, drugstore, 

hardware store, and lumberyard. Early 

newspapers included the Foyil Leader, Foyil 

News, Foyil Statesman, Farmer's Voice, Foyil 

City Breeze, Rogers County Leader, and Rogers 

County Democrat. 

Foyil lost residents during the Great 

Depression and in the following years of 

recovery. Being on Route 66 helped, but the 

population dipped to 127 in 1960. By 2008 the 

town’s estimated population was 250 with 

❖ 

Opposite, top: One of Oklahoma’s 

most unique landmarks, the nine-acre 

Totem Pole Park along Route 66 near 

Foyil draws tourists from around the 

world. Established by self-taught 

artist and craftsman Nathan Edward 

“Ed” Galloway (1880-1962) after he 

and his wife moved to the area in 

1937, today the site is listed on the 

National Register of Historic Places 

and is a project of the Rogers County 

Historical Society and the Foyil 

Heritage Association. The ninety-foot 

tall Totem Pole pictured here was built 

by Galloway between 1937 and 1948 

with 100 tons of sand and rock, 28 

tons of cement, and six tons of steel. It 

is adorned by two hundred carved 

pictures including nine-foot-tall 

images of Geronimo, Sitting Bull, 

Joseph, and a Comanche chief. 


Opposite, bottom: Master craftsman 

Nathan “Ed” Galloway stands with 

his eclectic display of folk art and 

crafts in The Fiddle House at Totem 

Pole Park around 1955. The elevensided 

Fiddle House was built by 

Galloway between 1948 and 1949 

and once housed three hundred 

fiddles, each crafted from a different 

exotic wood, ninety inlaid wood 

pictures and inlaid tables—all made 

by Galloway. 

Left: This early day Rogers County 

photo includes the ever-smiling Will 

Rogers at far right. 

Chapter III ✦ 37

❖ 

Above: The Bank of Oologah. 

Right and below: The last of eight 

children born to Clem and Mary 

Rogers, William Penn Adair Rogers 

was born November 4, 1879, in the 

southeast bedroom of this 1875 Greek 

revival style home on the Rogers’ 

ranch. The home is a “comparatively 

rare surviving example of buildings on 

the former Indian Territory frontier.” 

Today, it is a national historic 

landmark and open year-round. 

Emily Dabney visited the area with 

her family in the summer of 1999 and 

stops here for a view of the sprawling 

ranch, which sets along the shores of 

Lake Oologah. 

more than six hundred students enrolled in the 

public schools. 

Among celebrity residents of Foyil are Andy 

Payne, who won the Bunion Derby in 1928, and 

Josh Brown, a football star at the University of 

Nebraska and in the National Football League. 

In 1999 the folk art of Nathan Edward “Ed” 

Galloway was listed in the National Register of 

Historic Places. The art includes a concrete 



totem pole 90 feet tall, said to be the world’s 

largest totem pole of its kind. Galloway, working 

primarily by himself, began the totem pole in 

1937 and completed it in 1948. Galloway 

built other structures on the property including 

an Indian arrowhead that sticks from the 

ground and stylized birds. After Galloway’s 

death in 1962 the Oklahoma weather began 

deteriorating his work. In the 1990s the Rogers 

County Historical Society teamed with the 

Kansas Grass Roots Art Association and the 

Foyil Heritage Association to restore and repaint 

Galloway’s sculptures. 

INOLA 

Inola is a Cherokee word meaning “black 

fox.” Native Americans built a mound southwest 

of Inola near the Verdigris River and traded 

with the French and Spanish long before 

modern development. The town had its modern 

beginning when the Kansas and Arkansas Valley 

Railway, later the Missouri Pacific, laid tracks 

from Wagoner through future Rogers County to 

the Kansas line. The Inola post office was 

established March 1, 1890, with George Black as 

postmaster. Six months after it opened, the post 

office lost its designation, but was reestablished 

in April 1891. The estimated population of 

Inola in 1900 was one hundred. Two general 

stores, a blacksmith, two livestock dealers, and 

a doctor served the community. The Dawes 

Commission had the town surveyed and 

platted, prior to the Creek allotment, in 1902. 

The town’s first newspaper, the Inola Register, 

was founded by M. J. Phillippe in 1906. Later 

newspapers include the Inola News and the Inola 

Independent. By 1910 the town claimed 405 

citizens and a school system with eleven 

teachers. Agriculture, oil production, and coal 

mining provided income for people in the 

community. As the coal industry waned, and 

the rural-to-urban shift was occurring, the 

population of Inola dropped to 294 in 1950. 

A member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of 

Fame, Flash Terry, an accomplished blues 

musician, was born in Inola. For many years, he 

toured with popular bands and recorded for 

different labels. In 1988 the State Senate 

honored Terry’s band as “Oklahoma’s Favorite 

Blues Band.” 

In the second half of the twentieth century, 

Inola experienced steady growth as the town 

emerged as a bedroom community for Tulsa. 

By 1970 the population increased to 948. In 

1973, Public Service Company of Oklahoma 

announced plans to build the Black Fox Nuclear 

Power Plant to generate electricity. The nuclear 

plant drew national attention and intense 

protests. Even though Inola began annexing 

land around the proposed nuclear reactor, 

Public Service bowed to protest and suspended 

its plans to build the plant. 

In 2008, Inola’s estimated population was 

1,600 with more than 1,300 students enrolled 

in the public schools. Because of the rich 

pastureland in the area, Inola is known as the 

“hay capital of the world.” 

OOLOGAH 

Oklahoma historian George Shirk believed 

that the town of Oologah was named to honor a 

Cherokee chief and is translated “Dark Cloud.” 

However, for decades, other sources claimed 

the name means “cloudy weather” or “clouds.” 

During the Great Depression the Oklahoma 

Federal Writers’ Project sponsored the writing 

of a sketch on the town that said the name 

translated as “redhorse fish.” A Cherokee 

dictionary indicated that u wv gi la means 

“clouds” and o li ga means “redhorse fish.” 

Farmers and ranchers lived in the area long 

before there was a town. Will Rogers was born 

❖ 

This Will Rogers statue stands in 

downtown Oologah and is entitled, 

“Cherokee Kid”. It shows Will 

watering his horse “Soapsuds” at the 

downtown water pump. The statue 

was unveiled in 1995 by actor Ben 

Johnson and Will’s son, James Rogers. 

The Bank of Oologah is in the 

background. The statue is located at 

the intersection of Maple Street and 

Cooweescoowee Avenue. 

Chapter III ✦ 39

❖ 

Above: Oklahoma Poet Laureate 

Maggie Culver Fry (1900-1998) 

moved to her family’s home in 

Verdigris in her early twenties and 

soon met her future husband, Merritt 

Fry. The couple lived on a farm a few 

miles north of Verdigris and Maggie 

published her first book of poetry, The 

Witch Deer, in 1954. She continued 

her writing career while working as a 

secretary to State Senator Clem 

McSpadden and moved to a home 

near Claremore in 1957. Her second 

book of poetry, The Umbilical Cord, 

was published in 1974 and nominated 

for a Pulitzer Prize. She was named 

poet laureate of the State of 

Oklahoma by Governor David Boren 

in 1977. This photo was taken a 

decade later in 1987. 


Below: A threshing crew in Tiawah 

around 1910. John Weaver Green 

stands by the wheel. 

nearby on the Rogers’ ranch in 1879. In 1960, 

Will’s birthplace was moved to a hill overlooking 

Oologah Lake. 

The post office in Oologah was established 

on May 25, 1891. In 1900 the town’s population 

was 308 with three doctors, four general 

stores, a gristmill, four livestock dealers, and 

two blacksmiths. Strip coal mining and oil 

and gas production supplemented farming 

and ranching income. The Bank of Oologah 

was chartered in 1904, serving as the only 

bank in the area for twenty years. The bank 

building has been restored and is on the 

National Register of Historic Places. W .J. 

Eldridge founded the town’s first newspaper, 

the Oologah Star, in 1902. Other early 

newspapers were the Oologah Enterprise and 

the Oologah Tribune. 

The Great Depression took its toll on 

Oologah in the same manner it affected other 

towns in the state. The population dropped 

and the Bank of Oologah closed in 1932. 

However, one good thing came out of the 

1930s. In 1935, Bill Hoge, the town’s barber, 

started a new newspaper, the Oologah Oozings. 

Even though the paper lasted only six 

years, Hoge’s stories were quoted regularly in 

the New York Times and other faraway journals. 

Hoge had a cardinal rule—no crime news. He 

reported on who won the latest roping contest 

but would not print news of a chicken thief. He 

once said, “I didn’t want people to know we had 

that kind of folks in the community.” 

After World War II, a hardware store, general 

store, gas station, and a garage served the town 

whose population stood at 242 in 1950. In 1963 

the U.S. Corps of Engineers completed the first 

phase of the Oologah Dam, creating nearby 

Oologah Lake, a key unit in the master plan 

for flood control and navigation in the 

Verdigris and Arkansas River basins. The lake 

is also a water source for Tulsa and a prime 

recreation area. 

The coming of the lake created new 

prosperity and the population began to rise. By 

1980, Oologah’s population was 798. New 

development, including a bank and a new waste 

treatment plant, occurred in the 1980s. The lake 

features nearly 30,000 surface acres of water 

with 209 miles of shoreline, 18 miles of 

equestrian and hiking trails, and great fishing, 

skiing, canoeing, boating, and sailing. The Will 

Rogers Country Centennial Trail winds around 

the shore of the lake. 

A key player in the development of modern 

Oologah was Paul Kolman, founder of the first 

bank in the town since the Great Depression. 

Kolman worked tirelessly to attract medical 

care, a newspaper, and other businesses to 

Oologah. He and Wanda Saunders co-founded 

the Oologah Historical Society and helped 

promote the town’s heritage as the birthplace of 

Will Rogers. 

In 2008, Oologah had an estimated 900 

residents and the Oologah-Talala School District 

served more than 1,600 students. 


TALALA 

Talala was named for Captain John Talala 

Kell, a red-haired Cherokee officer of the Third 

Indian Home Guard Regiment during the 

Civil War. Talala is a Cherokee word for the 

redheaded woodpecker, a bird found in great 

numbers along a nearby creek that the Indians 

called Ta-la-la Creek. The town, located six 

miles north of Oologah, was established in 1889 

when the Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway 

completed laying tracks from Wagoner to 

Coffeyville, Kansas. 

The Talala post office opened on June 23, 

1890. Cattle ranching was a significant factor 

in the local economy in the early 1900s. The 

town was for a decade the leading cattle 

shipment point on the Kansas and Arkansas 

Valley Railroad. Shipping pens, dipping vats, 

and stockyards were located there and hay 

was exported in large quantities. By 1915 

several general stores, a hotel, a restaurant, 

churches, schools, a gristmill, two feed mills, a 

grocery store, a livery stable, and hay dealers 

served the population. There were five 

newspapers published in Talala in the early 

years, including the Talala Gazette, Talala 

Tribune, and the Talala Topic. 

The Talala bank closed during the Great 

Depression and other businesses and residents 

were lost to Tulsa. The population dropped from 

340 in 1910 to 198 in 1930. After reaching a 

century-low population of 147 in 1960, the 

Talala and Oologah schools were consolidated. 

There was renewed growth in Talala in the 

1990s. Ranching and agriculture were still the 

mainstays of the economy, but many residents 

worked in Tulsa. The official population of Talala 

was 270 in 2000. 

TIAWAH 

A prominent community that has disappeared 

from the official Oklahoma map is Tiawah, 

five miles southeast of Claremore. When the 

Cherokees received their allotments, Joseph 

Chambers selected thirty-five acres that 

reminded him of the Tiawah Mound in his 

home state of Georgia and platted lots to be sold 

to settlers. A house was built for the railroad 

section crew foreman. The house later served as 

the community’s school. 

At its pinnacle, Tiawah had several stores, a 

blacksmith, a road house, and two hay barns 

that supplied hay for cattle in the shipping pens 

built along the railroad. Tiawah had a post office 

from August 24, 1903, to December 31, 1938. 

VERDIGRIS 

In southwestern Rogers County is the town 

of Verdigris that took its name from the nearby 

❖ 

The Tiawah Community Baptist 

Church in 2008. 


Chapter III ✦ 41

operation. A string of small houses was built to 

house the superintendent and job bosses. Soon, 

grocery stores, a hardware store, restaurants, 

barber shops, gas stations, a pool hall, and a 

dance hall sprang up. 

After the growth of the 1920s, for years 

Verdigris was a sleepy small town with no 

increase in population. But with the construction 

of the Port of Catoosa and development of 

industry along the Verdigris River, the town 

became the choice of many homeowners who 

did not want to live in Tulsa. By 2008, Verdigris 

had a population of more than five thousand. 

Rogers County has also been the home of 

several communities and townships that no 

longer exist. Catale, northeast of Chelsea, was a 

Cherokee word meaning “in the valley” and its 

post office opened on October 6, 1894, and 

closed on February 15, 1933. 

❖ 

The Judy Eagleton Collection at the J. 

M. Davis Gun Museum in Claremore 

includes this colorful theatre banner 

from Oowala (above). The collection 

is entitled “A Tribute to Claremore” 

and includes numerous historic 

artifacts such as original bottles from 

the Claremore Soda Works and a 

large radium water jug from the 

Sanitarium Bath House. 

PHOTOS BY ERIC DABNEY. 

Verdigris River. For years, some influential 

citizens in Rogers County have recommended 

renaming Verdigris “South Claremore.” Author 

Kurt Vonnegut, in Armageddon in Retrospect, 

used Verdigris as the headquarters of the United 

Nations Demonological Investigating Committee. 

The Verdigris post office opened on March 

12, 1880, and served the community until 

November 15, 1954. In 1922 the Lock Joint 

Pipe Company moved into the town and times 

boomed. A huge messhall fed workers for 

the steel-cutting and concrete pipe-making 

OOWALA 

Oo-Wa-La, the Cherokee name of the tribe’s 

prominent Lipe family, was located northwest of 

Claremore. Its post office was established on 

March 18, 1881, and closed in December 1889. 

From September 1887 to June 1888, the post 

office name was Mayes. 

SAGEEYAH 

Sageeyah, which adjoined Oo-Wa-La, was 

the Cherokee rendering of Zaccheus and 

was named for Sageeyah Saunders, an earlyday 

resident. Its post office was opened on 

December 7, 1900, and closed on June 30, 1930. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alexander, Mabel Hovdahl. Via Oklahoma—And Still the Music Flows. Oklahoma Heritage Association, Oklahoma City, 

Oklahoma, 2004. 

Allen, C. M. The Sequoyah Convention. Harlow Publishing Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1925. 

Baird, W. David & Goble, Danny. The Story of Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1994. 

Braunlich, Phyllis Cole. Haunted By Home—The Life and Letters of Lynn Riggs. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 


Braunlich, Phyllis Cole. This Book, This Hill, These People: Poems by Lynn Riggs. Lynn Chase Publishing Company, Tulsa, 


Burke, Bob, Crow, Betty, & Meyers, Sandy. Art Treasures of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation 

Fund, Inc., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 2003. 

Carter, Joseph H. Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like—The Life and Writings of Will Rogers. Avon Books, New York, New York, 1991. 

Churchill, April, & Kizer-Dennis, Dorothy. Claremore. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, 2007. 

Collier, Jo Nell. Eastern University Preparatory School (1909-1917): Tapping the Wellspring of “Educere” on College Hill. Unpublished 

Dissertation, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, 2008. 

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1940. 

Eaton, Rachel Caroline. “The Legend of the Battle of Claremore Mound,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 8, No. 4. (1930), p. 370. 

Evans, Robert. Inola, Okla. The First 100 Years. Inola Historical Society, 2002. 

Ford, Beryl, Ford, Charles, Randle, Rodger, & Burke, Bob. Historic Tulsa. Historical Publishing Network, San Antonio, Texas, 2006. 

Foreman, Grant. A History of Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1942. 

Fugate, Francis L. & Roberta B. Roadside History of Oklahoma. Mountain Press Publishing Co., Missoula, Montana, 1991. 

Goins, Charles Robert & Goble, Danney. Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 4th edition. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 


Joseph, Bruce & Burke, Bob. A Field Guide to Oklahoma’s Historical Markers. Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, 


Kaho, Noel. The Will Rogers Country. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1941. 

Litton, Gaston. History of Oklahoma. Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., New York, New York, 1957. 

Recollections of Early Rogers County: Stories of Early Homes, Buildings, and Pioneers. Country Lane Press, Claremore, Oklahoma, 1987. 

Rogers County Yesterday and Today. Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1968. 

Shirk, George H. Oklahoma Place Names. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1965. 

Starr, Emmett. History of the Cherokee Indians. The Warden Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1921. 

The History of Rogers County, Oklahoma. Claremore College Foundation, Claremore, Oklahoma, 1979. 

Wardell, Morris L. A Political History of the Cherokee Nation. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1938. 

Bibliography ✦ 43

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

Pacesetter Claims 

Pelco Structural, LLC 

Rogers County Industrial 

Development Authority 

SHARING THE HERITAGE 

Historic profiles of businesses, 

organizations, and families that have 

contributed to the development and 

economic base of Rogers County 


The Frank W. Podpechan Family 

Hickory Coal Corporation & Claremont Corporation .......................46 

Cherokee Nation TM Entertainment, LLC ...............................................50 

Inola, Oklahoma .............................................................................52 

Advance Research Chemicals, Inc. .....................................................54 

Claremore Indian Hospital ...............................................................56 

Steel Service Building Company ........................................................58 

Rogers State University ...................................................................60 

Musgrove-Merriott-Smith Funeral Home .............................................62 

Froman Oil & Propane Co. ...............................................................64 

GEA Rainey Corporation ..................................................................66 

All American Fire Systems, Inc. ........................................................68 

AXH Air-Coolers.............................................................................70 

Clem and Donna McSpadden Family ..................................................71 

Lafarge .........................................................................................72 

Molly’s Landing ..............................................................................73 

Edward Jones Investments ................................................................74 

Claremore Motor Inn .......................................................................75 

A. M. Huffman Company..................................................................76 

Rogers County Historical Society.......................................................77 

Shaw Law Firm ..............................................................................78 

John Williams Company, Inc. ............................................................79 

Days Inn Claremore ........................................................................80 

RCB Bank ......................................................................................81 

Healthy Smiles Family Dentistry and 

Green Country School of Dental Assisting......................................82 

City of Claremore ...........................................................................83 

Inola Health Care Center .................................................................84 

Air-X-Changers ..............................................................................85 

Wood Manor Nursing Center.............................................................86 

OklaHomes Realty, Inc.....................................................................87 

Claremore Regional Hospital.............................................................88 

Fraley Insurance Agency, Inc. ...........................................................89 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

S&S Steel Construction 

Shipman Veterinary 

Services, Inc. 

Utility Cable 

Communications 

Sharing the Heritage ✦ 45

THE FRANK W. 

PODPECHAN 

FAMILY 

HICKORY COAL 

CORPORATION & 

CLAREMONT 

CORPORATION 

❖ 

Right: Frank J. and Mary Podpechan, 

July 1962. 

Below: Frank J. (left) and Bill 

Podpechan in the Hickory office area, 

February 1932. 

COURTESY OF LASSITER & 

SHORMAKER PHOTOGRAPHY. 

Frank W. Podpechan is a third generation coal 

miner. His grandfather, John Podpechan and 

wife Wilhelmina, emigrated from Slovenia, 

Austria, in the late nineteenth century and 

settled in the area near Pittsburg, Kansas, where 

he was a coal miner. Frank W.’s father, Frank J., 

was born on a farm in 1901 in Crawford County, 

Kansas, and his mother, Mary Demshar 

Podpechan, was born nearby in 1904. Frank and 

Mary married in 1925 and Frank W. was born on 

December 26, 1927, in his grandmother 

Demshar’s house in Crawford County, Kansas, as 

was his sister, Rosemary, on October 10, 1929. 

In late 1929, the Frank J. family moved to 

Tulsa, Oklahoma, and founded Hickory Coal 

Company along with Frank J.’s brother Bill and 

Mary’s cousin Sam Bregar. Hickory was a small 

underground slope coal mine located near 26th 

Twenty-Sixth Street and Pittsburg, just south of 

the Tulsa fairgrounds. 

The Podpechan family history in Rogers 

County began in 1937 when Frank J. and 

partner Paul Adamson purchased the Rogers 

County Coal Company from L.S. Robson, Ed 

Lightner, and Shorty York. The coal operation 

was a small strip mine located near the 

community of Sequoyah, six miles northeast of 

Claremore. When Frank J. first arrived in 

Claremore, he took up lodging at the Mason 

Hotel, which at the time was owned and 

operated by J. M. Davis, who is famous for his 

large gun collection. Frank J. and J. M. Davis 

became good friends then and remained so until 

J. M.’s death. 

In 1938, the family moved to Claremore from 

Tulsa and rented a house at 711 North Choctaw. 

The family at that time consisted of Frank J., 

Mary, Frank W., and Rosemary. Frank W. 

entered the sixth grade at Claremont Elementary 

School and Rosemary entered the third grade at 

Hiawatha Elementary School. The family 

moved back to Tulsa in 1940 and another 

child, John J., was born on November 

3, 1940. They returned to Claremore 

in the summer of 1941 and purchased 

the old Dr. Jennings home at 122 East 

Fifth Street. Frank W. entered the ninth 

grade at Claremore High School and 

Rosemary entered the seventh grade at 

Claremont Elementary. 

After graduation from Claremore 

High School in 1945, Frank W. enrolled 

at Oklahoma A&M College in Stillwater, 

now Oklahoma State University, and was 

a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. 

Rosemary graduated from Claremore 

High School in 1947, attended Oklahoma 

College for Women for one year, and 

then attended Tulsa University where she 

met her future husband, Bill Dost. The 

couple was married in May 1949. 

Brother John J. was attending Claremore 

Elementary School by this time. 


Frank W. joined the 45th Infantry Division 

of the Oklahoma National Guard in 1948 and 

graduated from Oklahoma A&M with a 

bachelor of science degree in geology in 1950. 

He married Jane A. McMillin in August 1950 

and was activated into the United States Army 

with the 45th Infantry Division on September 1. 

He was sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana for basic 

training. In April 1951, he was sent overseas to 

Hokkaido, Japan, for more training. While in 

Japan, his daughter Mary Fran was born on June 

21, 1951. In December 1951, he and the 45th 

were sent to Korea and stationed there during 

the war until April 1952. After two years of 

active duty, Frank returned to the United States 

and was discharged from the United States 

Army on May 10, 1952. 

After returning to Claremore, Frank W. 

accepted a job with Stanolind Oil and Gas 

Company. To learn the job, he was sent to 

Levelland, Texas, on June 4, 1952, and worked 

as a roustabout and roughneck for nine months 

before being promoted to junior geologist and 

moving to Roswell, New Mexico, in April 1953. 

While living in Roswell, a son, Joe, was born on 

June 4, 1953. After being promoted to the next 

higher grade of geologist, Frank W. worked in 

Roswell until the summer of 1956 and then was 

transferred to Fort Worth, Texas, to be an 

assistant to the division geologist. While living 

in Fort Worth, his daughter Luanne was born on 

April 10, 1957. 

In the summer of 1957, Frank W. decided to 

resign his job and joined a friend, Steve Helbing, 

a former land man for Stanolind, to form 

Helbing and Podpechan, an independent oil and 

natural gas business in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

While living in Albuquerque, his daughter Jan 

Ellen was born on September 5, 1958. 

The partnership stayed in Albuquerque 

until the summer of 1959, and then moved 

to Roswell, New Mexico to pursue business 

in both New Mexico and west Texas. After a 

successful six years in this partnership, Frank 

was offered the position of exploration manager 

and vice president of Redfern Development 

Corporation and Flag Oil Company in Midland, 

Texas, which he accepted. He and Helbing 

dissolved the partnership and the family moved 

to Midland during the summer of 1963. 

In October 1960, Frank earned a single 

engine pilots license to cut down travel time 

between oil and gas operations across New 

Mexico and Texas. He actively flew for several 

years until he moved to Midland, Texas. During 

this time he often flew to his parents’ home in 

Claremore, Oklahoma along with his daughters, 

Mary, Luanne and Jan. 

Under this arrangement he was able to pursue 

his own independent oil and gas business 

and keep an existing consulting arrangement 

with Peabody Coal Company. During the time 

in Midland, Frank purchased the Claremore 

Abstract Company and agreed to bring in Warren 

Johnston as one half owner and manager. 

In 1968, Frank was approached by T. Boone 

Pickens, president of Mesa Petroleum, and offered 

a position of vice president and Canadian manager 

of Mesa in Calgary, Alberta, 

Canada. Frank accepted the offer 

and the family immigrated to 

Calgary during the summer of 

1968. Before moving, Frank 

formed Claremont Corporation 

with his four children, which 

included all of his oil and gas 

interests in the United States. 

After spending a year in Calgary 

helping build Mesa’s competitive 

operation in Calgary, Frank 

decided to resign from Mesa in 

the summer of 1969 and return 

to Claremore. 

After returning to Claremore 

in 1969 daughter Mary enrolled 

in Oklahoma State University 

and Joe, Luanne, and Jan 

enrolled in Claremore Public 

❖ 

Left: Frank J. and Mary Podpechan 

are on the left in this photograph 

taken in May 1961. 


❖ 

The children of Frank W. and Jane 

Podpechan, July 1980. 

Schools. Frank had offices at the Claremore 

Abstract Co. and began renewing old oil and gas 

relationships and looking after Peabody Coal 

Co. oil and gas properties. Also in 1969 he 

and a couple of oil and gas associates from 

Oklahoma City, Bill Jenkins and Carl Swan, 

decided to form a Canadian oil and gas 

exploration company which was named Sierra 

Resources Ltd. It was headquartered in Calgary, 

Alberta, Canada, and a Canadian staff was hired. 

Frank was president and Jenkins and Swan were 

stock holders and board members. 

However, Frank could never escape from the 

coal mining industry in which he was raised. 

In 1970 at the suggestion of his father, he 

organized Sierra Coal Corporation, which 

mined coal properties in Muskogee County, 

with a contract to supply the Tennessee Valley 

Authority. About this time Frank’s mother, Mary, 

became ill with cancer and died on October 11, 

1970. Sierra Coal Corporation was merged 

with Sierra Resources Ltd and Petroleum 

Reserve Corp., previously an Oklahoma City 

independent oil and gas company, and 

headquartered in Tulsa. Podpechan served as 

Chairman of the Board and President of all the 

companies. Sierra Coal was later changed to 

Carbonex Coal Company then all the companies 

were taken public on the Toronto Stock 

Exchange in 1973 and the name changed to 

Skye Resources Ltd. 

Podpechan remained chairman of the board 

and president of Skye Resources. Ltd. as a 

Canadian publicly traded company. He remained 

president of Skye Resources until 1982 when it 

was merged with Campbell Resources, Inc., a 

Canadian corporation listed on the New York 

Stock Exchange, with Podpechan being named 

to the board of directors. In the same time 

frame (1976-1986) Podpechan also operated 

Sweetwater Coal Company in Rogers County, 

Oklahoma, mining about ten thousand tons per 

month of metallurgical coal for Lone Star Steel. 

Frank’s father, Frank J., passed away on 

December 7, 1978, at the age of seventy-seven. 

After the merger with Campbell, Podpechan 

moved Claremont’s office to the Philtower 

Building in Tulsa in March 1982 and established 

a new operation with his adult children. In 

1987, Frank bought out his children and 

became hundred percent owner of Claremont. 

In 1982, he was divorced from his wife Jane and 

lived alone in Claremore. He maintained an 

office with his accountant, Bill Flanagan, and 

also managed Sweetwater Coal Company. 

In 1985, Podpechan and a group of investors 

including Russell Wienecke, vice president and 

operations manager; Bill Flanagan accountant 

and stockholder; Bill Peacher, financial advisor 

and board member; Tom Seymour, attorney and 

stockholder; and Roxey Nelson, secretary and 

stockholder, formed Hickory Coal Corporation 

and purchased Carbonex Coal Company’s 

Oklahoma coal operation, a strip coal mining 

company in northeastern Oklahoma with investor 

cash and Podpechan stock ownership in 

Campbell Resources. Podpechan became 

Chairman of the Board and President. 

In July 1986, Frank decided to begin 

flying again for business and pleasure 

and purchased a 1970 model Cessna 

182. He used the plane to fly over 

Oklahoma mining operations as well 

as taking trips to other states to look 

for mining machinery. In 1988, Frank 

married Roxey Nelson and built a new 

home in Claremore. Roxey had three 

children, Ranee, Todd and Tanna, from a 

previous marriage. In 1989, Roxey 

decided to learn to fly and received 

her single engine pilot’s license in 

September, 1989. She was now able 

to act as copilot on trips around the country. 

Earlier that year, Frank purchased a more 

complex airplane, a Cessna T210. Roxey was 


quite helpful with piloting and navigating the 

T210. Together they had many interesting and 

fun trips across the USA and Canada until they 

sold the Cessna in 1995 and went back to driving. 

Eventually, Sweetwater Coal merged with 

Hickory, which became one of the major coal 

producers in Oklahoma, mining as much as 

350,000 tons per year of high grade metallurgical 

and steam coal. Coal sales lessened after the 

spring of 1992 and coal reserves were limited so 

it was evident that after a successful operation of 

eight years that profit margin was not sufficient 

to continue mining. Hickory’s equipment and 

reserves were sold for cash and it became 

inactive after ceasing mining in 1993. All of its 

reclamation obligations were fulfilled and 

continues as an inactive corporation. 

Although semi-retired, Podpechan remains 

active in the oil and gas industry and commercial 

real estate investments. He is the last of the family 

to pursue the coal business. His son Joe is a 

petroleum geologist in Tulsa and is a partner 

with Claremont in several ventures. Claremont 

Corp. is presently actively participating in oil 

and gas ventures in Oklahoma, Texas and New 

Mexico and maintains an office in Claremore 

at 323 West First Street, and in Tulsa with 

Muirfield Resources, where his daughter Luanne 

is comptroller and looks over the management 

of Claremont Corporation’s oil & gas properties. 

Frank’s daughter Mary is a District Judge for the 

14th Judicial District in Oklahoma and daughter 

Jan is a reading specialist with Broken Arrow 

Public Schools in Oklahoma. All four children 

attended Oklahoma State University. Frank 

spends much of his time both in southwest 

Florida and Tulsa. In addition to Frank’s four 

children and Roxey’s three children, Frank 

and Roxey have four grandsons, five granddaughters, 

one great-grandson with another 

great grandchild on the way. Frank W. is on the 

board of the Indian Nations Council of Boy 

Scouts in Tulsa and is active in other professional 

and civic organizations. 

❖ 

Roxey and Frank W. Podpechan. 


CHEROKEE 

NATION TM 

ENTERTAINMENT, 

LLC 

Cherokee Nation Enterprises is the retail, 

gaming, hospitality entertainment and cultural 

tourism business of the Cherokee Nation. 

Wholly owned by the Cherokee Nation, CNE 

operates independently from the tribe to ensure 

sound business decisions are made free from 

political pressures. 

The visionary founders of the Cherokee 

Bingo Outpost, later to be named Cherokee 

Casino Resort, included Cherokee Nation 

Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee 

Nation Tribal Council members and members 

of the executive team in the Mankiller administration. 

CNE was tasked to promote the 

economic self-reliance of the Cherokee Nation 

by continually growing and creating more jobs 

for Cherokee citizens. 

During the late 1980s, Cherokee Nation 

leadership felt that traditional economic 

development projects would create jobs and 

eventually generate dividends for the Cherokee 

Nation. As federal funding for core programs 

began to decrease, however, tribal leaders began 

to take notice of the gaming industry. 

By December 1989, Cherokee Nation Outpost 

was incorporated as the retail and gaming arm 

of the Cherokee Nation and opened its first 

Bingo Outpost in November 1990 in Roland. 

With that facility up and running, the revenue 

was used to develop the Cherokee Nation’s 

second “Bingo Outpost” in Catoosa. 

The location in Catoosa was chosen because 

of its proximity to Tulsa and an interstate 

highway. With full support of local officials 

and the community, the facility opened in 

September 1993 with more than 40,000 square 

feet of bingo gaming and 80 employees. 

Cherokee Nation Outpost officially became 

Cherokee Nation Enterprises, in 1996 and 

in July 2009, became Cherokee Nation TM 

Entertainment, LLC. 

As popularity of the bingo games increased, 

the facility was first expanded in 2001 and 

opened in 2002, which added increased bingo 

games, blackjack and entertainment. In 2004 

the Cherokee Nation signed a contract with 

the state of Oklahoma that allowed the gaming 

company to offer non-bingo electronic games 

and non-house banked card games, such as 

poker. It then began construction on what 

would become ninety-five thousand square feet 

of gaming, dining and entertainment. 

Later that year, with a total of 877 employees, 

the “Bingo Outpost” reopened as Cherokee 

Casino Resort, along with Cherokee Hills Golf 

Course and a seven-story, 150-room hotel 

tower—the first gaming-hotel in Oklahoma. In 

2005 the resort was also the first gaming facility 

in Oklahoma to deal a hand of poker under the 

new state-tribal compact. 

Today, Cherokee Casino Resort is the premier 

gaming, entertainment and hospitality resort 

in Oklahoma, with yet another comprehensive 


expansion project underway. Its latest property 

expansion is adding 30,000 square feet of 

increased gaming space, a 19-story hotel tower, 

additional restaurants, a Toby Keith’s 

I Love This Bar & Grill, increased convention 

space and a 2,500-seat multi-purpose theater. 

By mid-2009, the casino and hotel complex 

will encompass more than 350,000 square feet, 

including more than 2,300 electronic games, 

more than 70 poker and card games tables, 

nearly 500 hotel rooms, 5 restaurants, 7 bars 

and entertainment venues, an 18-hole championship 

golf course and 35,000 square feet of 

convention space. 

Since 2003, CNE has given more than 

$875,000 to local fire and police departments, 

nearly $100,000 to area schools, and more than 

$1 million to community organizations. CNE’s 

advancements have spurred regional economic 

growth in the form of new jobs at CNE 

properties and from outside businesses locating 

to these communities. 

Each Cherokee Casino finds ways of giving 

back to its community. West Siloam Springs 

has raised money for Hope House and 

the American Cancer Society’s Relay 

for Life. Employees in Tahlequah have 

participated in the Locks of Love and 

Pantene Beautiful Lengths programs, 

which lets people donate their hair to 

create wigs for cancer patients. Cherokee 

Casino Resort has donated to the 

Community Food Bank of Eastern 

Oklahoma, has held frequent American 

Red Cross blood drives and the resort’s 

employees have participated in Keep 

Catoosa Beautiful. 

CNE dedicates a portion of its profits to those 

who need it most through vital services and 

programs, such as health services and education 

programs. It also preserves the Cherokee 

homeland through environmental 

and conservation programs, land 

purchases, wildlife management and 

the upkeep of trust land and tribally 

owned facilities. 

Today, CNE operates gaming facilities 

in Roland, Catoosa, West Siloam 

Springs, Fort Gibson, Tahlequah and 

Sallisaw as well as a horseracing track 

and casino in Claremore. The company 

also operates the Cherokee Travel Plaza 

in Roland, two Cherokee Outpost 

convenience stores, six retail tobacco 

shops, two golf courses, three gift shops and 

three hotels. 


INOLA, 

OKLAHOMA 

❖ 

Above: The Inola welcome sign 

donated by the Inola Lion’s Club. 

Below: Inola Hay Day Parade, 2008. 

To the outside world Inola is known as the 

“Hay Capital of the World.” For those who take 

the time to visit and get to know the locals, they 

can leave feeling like part of the family. Inola is 

located at the southern tip of Rogers County, 

thirty minutes from Tulsa and twenty minutes 

from the county seat of Claremore. Inola is the 

ideal location for easy access to the Will Rogers 

Turnpike: Route 69 will get you to Kansas or 

into Dallas, Texas. Hop back onto 412 and 

Arkansas is only forty-five minutes away. 

Inola sits on what was Creek Indian land, 

near the border between the Creek and 

Cherokee nations. It was named by William P. 

Ross, twice chief of the Cherokee Nation, after a 

half-breed named E-No-Lah, or Black Fox. Inola 

is situated in the perfect geographic location 

for growth and for years town leaders have 

believed that Inola’s time is just on the horizon 

because of its easy access to roads, railroads and 

the river. 

Inola is built around the families that have 

been part of Inola for generations. Many of the 

same families are still part of Inola to this day. 

Inola’s small town cafes are known for their 

home-style cooking and have a reputation for 

being some of the best in Oklahoma. If you visit 

from out of town, do not be surprised if a local 

sits down at your table if you have an empty 

chair available. 

The Inola Volunteer Fire Department is 

one of the best volunteer fire departments in 

Oklahoma. They are the only certified scuba 

rescue team in Rogers County and the 

surrounding areas. And they are also 100 

percent first responder certified. 

Inola Hay Day is a historical event in Inola. 

The festival is held the last weekend in June as 

was traditional when the celebration first started 

to celebrate the first good cut of the haying 

season. Now Hay Day is a time to come into 

town from Thursday to Saturday night and 


enjoy the carnival, the beauty pageant, the car 

show and the live entertainment and street 

dance. Other fun activities include the frog 

jump, the turtle races, horseshoe tournament, 

the hay toss and cow patty bingo. 

The Inola Chamber of Commerce strives to 

encourage, inform and support the membership 

of current and future economic development 

and municipal issues. Inola formed REDI (rural 

economic development of Inola) in 2008 which 

is an authority that is a branch of the city. 

The chamber and REDI will work hand in 

hand for the economic development of Inola. 

The chamber lunch is the first Thursday of 

the month at noon at the Inola United 

Methodist Church. 

The Inola senior citizens center is open 

Monday to Friday from 12 pm to 5 pm to 

accommodate any seniors who want to use the 

facility to visit, play cards, etc. Lunch is served 

on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for $3 per 

meal and dues for members are $3 per month. 

The Inola Public library is open five days a 

week and offers public access computers, books 

on tape, videos, and a wide range of books. A 

new service at the library is called the Inter 

Library Loan. The library can get any book 

within a few days of a person’s request. The 

library hours are Monday, Wednesday and 

Friday from 10 to 4:30 and Tuesday and 

Thursday from Noon to 7. 

Inola has been considered the “Hay Capital of 

the World” for thirty-five years because of the 

high quality of Bluestem Prairie hay grown in 

the many hay fields here. 

People who want to do business in a 

community where everybody knows your name, 

take a longer look at Inola. Inola is a close-knit 

community that is known for taking care of its 

own. A quick drive through town will result in 

many friendly waves. 

❖ 

Above: Inola Fire Station #2. 

Below: Inola Chamber of Commerce 

Christmas Parade with Santa on the 

fire truck. 


❖ 

ADVANCE 

RESEARCH 

CHEMICALS, 

INC. 

Below: President and CEO Dr. Dayal 

T. Meshri. 

Bottom: President and CEO Dr. Dayal 

T. Meshri with Dr. Tim White, 

president of the University of Idaho. 

Dr. Meshri was inducted into the 

University of Idaho’s Hall of Fame. 

Founded by visionary scientist Dr. Dayal T. 

Meshri at the Port of Catoosa in 1987, Advance 

Research Chemicals, Inc., (ARC) was created to 

address the growing need for specialty fluoro 

chemicals. Over twenty three years later, “Doc” 

Meshri’s chemical research company has grown 

beyond his wildest dreams. 

Born in British India, Meshri ended up 

moving to India and choosing Indian citizenship 

during the partition of British India into India 

and Pakistan. He received his B.Sc. First Class in 

chemistry from Gujarat University, his M.Sc. 

from MR Institute of Science, his Ph.D. from the 

University of Idaho, and completed his 

postdoctoral work at Cornell University. He then 

joined Ozark-Mahoning Co., Pennwalt Corp. as 

head of research and research director and after 

eighteen years with Ozark, Meshri embarked 

on a new adventure with the opening of ARC. 

Meshri’s interests vary from rocket 

propellants to biochemical drugs, highenergy 

battery systems, new materials for 

wafers, etc. He was a member of the 

European Grand Sasso Neutrino Project, the 

Space Research Advisory Board, Princeton 

University, and the Advisory Board for 

Scientific Curriculum at TJC (TCC). He was 

selected as “Businessman of the Year” in 2003 

by the National Republican Congressional 

Committee, is a noted author and coauthor of 

many technical papers, patents, books and 

encyclopedias of chemical technology, and is 

recognized as an industrial fluorine chemist 

worldwide as he coordinates research projects 

with associates in France, England, Germany, 

Russia, and Ukraine. 

Starting from three employees and first-year 

sales of about $100,000, Advance Research 

Chemical’s revenues have grown exponentially 

in its ability to develop and supply niche 

products with short turnaround times. The 

company’s first major account came when 

Meshri was awarded a contract with General 

Motors for a zinc fluoride solution that radiators 

were dipped into to prevent corrosion. 

Operating under Meshri’s foundational 

principal of “quality, service, and price,” ARC now 

includes more than 60 employees and produces 

nearly 300 different chemicals at the Catoosa 

plants, which includes three separate campuses. 

The research laboratories, pilot plant, and 

production facility occupy more than 120,000 

square feet of space at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. 

ARC remains the world’s largest producer of 

lithium ion electrolytes used in batteries, 

including every heart pacemaker made in the 

world, are the sole producer of hydrogenreduced 

titanium chloride, and have developed 

a new flux for welding aluminum radiators, 

condensers, and coils, becoming the second 

supplier of the specialty flux. 

Construction of a $1.8-$2-million plant was 

completed to produce lithium battery 

electrolytes and photoinitiators, and 

Meshri has just completed another 

multimillion dollar unit to produce 

cathode materials. The company is also a 

supplier of electrolytes to the Electric 

Vehicle Battery Consortium, which is 

developing new-generation batteries. 

Today, in a market with a sparse 

production base that in some segments has 

only one other producer, ARC has become 

a primary producer of specialty inorganic 

fluorides, supplying more than three 

hundred fluorine-based chemicals, 

ultrapure specialty gases, bromides, 

sulfonates, phosphates, and other 

inorganics with distributors in United 

Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, 

Spain, Italy, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, 

Australia, India, and Ukraine. 


❖ 

Top, left: A monumental moment for 

the ARC Team—when it shipped its 

first ton of WF6 99.95 percent. 

Top, right: President/CEO Dr. Dayal 

T. Meshri, and his son, Executive Vice 

President and Managing Director 

Sanjay Meshri. 

Left: Three of Advance Research 

Chemicals’ facilities located at the 

Tulsa Port of Catoosa. 


CLAREMORE 

INDIAN 

HOSPITAL 

The Claremore Indian Hospital is located in 

the historic city of Claremore which is situated 

in Oklahoma’s beautiful Green Country. 

Historically, the original hospital first garnered 

nationwide attention in 1926 when Will Rogers 

urged citizens reading his famous newspaper 

column to contact their Senators and 

Congressman to support a bill to fund the facility. 

By 1930, Rogers commented in his April 27 radio 

address that “the only Indian hospital in the 

United States” was ready to celebrate its grand 

opening. The original facility was built in 1929 

and opened in 1930. It was operated at that time 

by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the 

Interior. In July 1955 the Indian Health Service 

separated from the BIA and was put under the 

Department of Health, Education and Welfare. 

Today the Indian Health Service operates under 

the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The hospital encompasses twelve counties 

and 7,750 square miles. It serves an Indian 

population of over sixty-three thousand from 

various tribal memberships. Having integrated 

extensively with the non-Indian population in 

terms of education, employment, and language, 

the people served by this unit reflect patterns of 

illness that largely parallel those of the general 

Oklahoma population. 

Claremore Indian Hospital provides inpatient 

services and outpatient care through nine 

organized clinical services: community health, 

dentistry, optometry, emergency medical 

services, general surgery, internal medicine, 

obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and 

radiology. All these departments are headed by 

board certified or board eligible chiefs of service. 

The current facility was opened in 1977 and 

has been Joint Commission accredited since 

1978. The general philosophy of the Indian 

Health Service is to employ a team approach 

to disease prevention, management, and 

treatment. A prime example is the diabetes 

program which coordinates the expertise of 

several disciplines, including physicians, 

nurses, dietitians, physical therapists, dental, 

optometry, and podiatry—each professional 

focusing his/her expertise on treating the 

growing problem of diabetes. The pharmacy 

has both anticoagulation and lipid clinics 

of national recognition. The pharmacy-based 

referral clinics manage most of the hospital’s 

patients that require anticoagulation therapy or 

lipid management. 

This rapid-paced hospital maintains academic 

affiliations with six teaching institutions, hosting 

trainees in nursing, dentistry, physician 


assistance, family practice, and pharmacy. 

Medical students and resident physicians have 

the opportunity to perform clinical rotations on 

nearly every clinical service in the facility. 

In 1976, Congress enacted the Indian Health 

Care Improvement Act (IHCIA) to provide “the 

highest possible health status to Indians and 

to provide existing Indian health services with 

all resources necessary to affect that policy.” In 

passing the Act, Congress noted the government’s 

“unique legal relationship with and resulting 

responsibility to” Indians, necessitated the 

creation of a comprehensive healthcare system. 

The IHCIA set forth the following goals for 

the IHS: to assure Native Americans access to 

high quality comprehensive health services 

in accordance with need; to assist tribes in 

developing the capacity to staff and manage their 

own health programs and to provide opportunities 

for tribes to assume operational authority for 

IHS programs in their communities; and to be 

the primary federal advocate for Native Americans 

with respect to healthcare matters and to assist 

them in accessing programs to which they are 

entitled. Subsequent amendments in 1992 

extended the purpose of the IHCIA to raising the 

health status of Native Americans over a specified 

period of time to the level of the general United 

States population. Additionally, the IHCIA sought 

a high level of participation by Indian tribes in 

the planning and management of IHS programs, 

services, and demonstration projects under 

subsequent self-determination amendments. 

The Claremore Indian Hospital is a government 

owned and operated facility. A tribal advisory 

board supports, advises, and voices local concerns 

to the hospital leadership on a continual and 

routine bases. The following tribes actively 

participate: Cherokee Nation, Creek Nation, 

United Keetoowah Band, Alabama/Quassarte 

Tribal Town, Kialegee Tribal Town, Thlopthlocco 

Tribal Town, Delaware Tribe of Indians, Eastern 

Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, Shawnee Tribe, 

Miami Nation of Oklahoma, Modoc Tribe of 

Oklahoma, Osage Tribe of Indians, Ottawa Tribe of 

Oklahoma, Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, 

Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, Seneca/Cayuga Tribe 

of Oklahoma, and Wyandotte Nation. 


STEEL SERVICE 

BUILDING 

COMPANY 

Since 1975, Steel Service Building Company’s 

(SSBC) international capability and focus on 

the individual customer have firmly established 

it as the premier company in the pre-engineered 

metal building industry. For commercial or 

industrial structures, schools, agricultural 

buildings, church facilities, or office space, no 

matter the size, SSBC offers outstanding quality. 

While every building is professionally designed 

and engineered to meet the toughest structural 

building codes in the world, the company 

continues to offer among the most competitive 

prices in the industry. 

Many of the traits that make Steel Service 

Building Company an industry leader include 

answering questions and rapid provision of 

availability and cost quotation, ensuring that all 

of the elemental components that make up a 

customer’s particular building are the very best. 

The company’s commitment to quality service 

and responsiveness to the specific needs of each 

customer have made it the standard for excellence 

in the industry. From initial contact to final 

delivery, SSBC provides the customer with the 

design and features a building project requires. 

The company’s wide selection of framing systems, 

roof types, wall types and accessory components 

offers the unparalleled flexibility demanded by 

today’s architects, builders, and contractors. 

At Steel Service Building Company, a staff of 

dedicated and knowledgeable professionals 

works to make sure that every stage of a 

customer’s building fabrication runs smoothly. 

Sales associates are highly knowledgeable 

regarding the industry and are the customer’s 

“point of contact” with SSBC and can answer 

questions about products, specifications, and 

timing, and follow the order as its components 

are being made, keeping customers informed at 

every stage of the process. 

Estimators take the requirements and the 

specific type of building to be manufactured 

and then accurately develop a cost profile for 

the project. This provides the customer with 

realistic cost figures that can then be used in 

their own budgeting forecasts. 

Skilled draftsmen work in close partnership with 

the architects, engineers, and contractors/builders 

to develop the detailed drawings necessary for 

the shop to manufacture the components to the 

customer’s building specifications. 

The Shop Staff consists of a cadre of highly 

trained metal workers, fabricators, and welders, 

whose combined experience and expertise makes 

certain that every component for a building runs 

smoothly through the plan, while matching 

the job specifications so they can be efficiently 

erected at the construction site. 

The administrative staff is the overall 

coordinator of the process and ensures that 

schedules are met and customers remain 

satisfied. With in-depth knowledge and 

understanding of the company’s overall 

commitments and capabilities, they direct any 

questions about any special requirements or 

projects a customer may be considering to the 

appropriate SSBC professional. 

Steel Service Building Company is located at 

24304 Amah Parkway. For more information 

visit the web at www.steelservicebuilding.com. 



ROGERS STATE 

UNIVERSITY 

Rogers State University has a long 

and proud history as a high-quality 

institution of higher learning serving 

the educational and professional needs 

of residents of the Claremore area, 

northeastern Oklahoma, and, via its 

distance learning programs, the nation 

and the world. For almost one hundred 

years, the institution on College Hill, 

which overlooks the city of Claremore, 

has symbolized quality education 

and service to area residents. RSU 

was founded in 1909 and officially 

established as Eastern University 

Preparatory School in Claremore by the 

Oklahoma Legislature in its second session. 

It was created to prepare the sons and daughters 

of Native Americans, farmers, and ranchers 

for entry into the colleges and universities 

of Oklahoma. 

As a condition established by the Oklahoma 

Legislature, the citizens of Claremore raised 

$3,000 to purchase land for the new institution. 

A group known as the “Hilltoppers” located 

forty acres of land on College Hill and 

construction began on a building for the new 

institution, Preparatory Hall. 

During the construction of Preparatory 

Hall, classes were held in the old Claremont 

Building in downtown Claremore. Five students 

graduated at the end of the institution’s first 

academic year, and the institution continued to 

grow rapidly, adding a library in 1914 and 

receiving accreditation as a secondary school by 

the North Central Association of Colleges and 

Secondary Schools in 1916. 

Preparatory Hall housed the entire operation of 

Eastern University Preparatory School until the 

institution was closed in 1917 due to the 

changing educational needs of area residents. Two 

years later, the school was resurrected as the 

Oklahoma Military Academy. By 1923 the historic 

academy offered secondary education and two 

years of college to young men from Oklahoma 

and across the nation and quickly gained 

recognition as one of the top military schools in 

the United States. More than twenty-five hundred 

Oklahoma Military Academy graduates served in 

the Armed Forces of the United States during 

World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam 

War. Among the graduates of the academy is 

retired Lieutenant General William E. Potts—the 

most decorated living soldier in the U.S. Army. 

In 1971, in response to the growing 

educational needs of a rapidly developing 

technological and industrial economy in the 

Claremore area, the Oklahoma Legislature 

replaced the Oklahoma Military Academy with 

Claremore Junior College. The mission of the 

institution was expanded to provide a variety 

of high-quality two-year associate’s degree 

programs for area residents. 

Claremore Junior College quickly grew from 

477 students in 1971 to more than 3,000 in 

1982, when the institution was renamed Rogers 

State College. The institution prospered, adding 

a variety of academic programs, including the 

state’s only full-power public television station 

to be located on a university campus, and the 

Thunderbird Library. 


In 1996 the Oklahoma Legislature approved 

the merger of Rogers State College and the 

University Center at Tulsa (UCAT), a consortium 

of four Oklahoma universities—the University 

of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, 

Northeastern State University, and Langston 

University. The new institution was named 

Rogers University and continued operation for 

two years. 

In 1998 the Oklahoma Legislature separated 

the institutions, creating a branch of Oklahoma 

State University in Tulsa and Rogers State 

University, a regional university with a main 

campus in Claremore, and granted permission 

for RSU to create and seek accreditation for its 

own four-year bachelor’s degrees, while 

continuing to offer high-quality two-year 

associate’s degrees. 

In August 2000, RSU was granted accreditation 

as a four-year baccalaureate degreegranting 

institution. 

Today, RSU is the fastest growing university 

in Oklahoma. In fall 2008, nearly four thousand 

students were enrolled at RSU’s campuses in 

Claremore, Bartlesville, and Pryor. RSU has 

transformed its main campus in Claremore 

through several new building and renovation 

projects, including the state-of-the-art Stratton 

Taylor Library, Student Center, on-campus 

student living community, several athletic fields 

and the Innovation Center, a business incubator. 

❖ 

Above: Preparatory Hall features a 

golden dome atop of the structure, 

which was built in 1910 and is the 

oldest building on campus. 


MUSGROVE-MERRIOTT-SMITH FUNERAL SERVICE 

❖ 

Above: Inola open house, 2004. 

Standing (left to right): Frank 

Friedemann, Cindy Smith, Jim Smith, 

Ryan Payne, Denise Cooper, and 

Charlie Bray. Seated: Paul Merriott 

and June Medlock. 

Founded in rich family heritage and Rogers 

County tradition, Jim and Cindy Smith have 

taken Musgrove-Merriott-Smith Funeral Service 

to a new level. Long past the traditional funeral 

service and burial philosophy, they have 

introduced a continuum of community service. 

Along with Cindy’s parents, Paul and Alice 

Merriott, Jim and Cindy purchased the Musgrove 

Funeral Home, which is the oldest funeral home 

in Rogers County in October 1970. The Merriotts 

had been in the funeral business in Nowata. 

Paul and Alice purchased the Chelsea Funeral 

Home in 1958. They sold the Paul Merriott 

Funeral Home in Chelsea in 1971. Paul and 

Alice were partners in Musgrove-Merriott-Smith 

Funeral Service until 1974 when they retired 

but remained actively involved with Jim and 

Cindy. Alice was a licensed funeral director. She 

passed away in 1991. 

Residents of Claremore since 1970, Jim 

and Cindy are members of First Presbyterian 

Church, Claremore Public Schools Foundation, 

and Claremore Chamber of Commerce. They 

are both graduates of Chelsea High School. 

Jim attended Oklahoma Military Academy, 

Northeastern Oklahoma State University, and 

earned a mortuary science degree at the Dallas 

Institute of Mortuary Science. 

In addition to two new convenient locations, 

expanding to Chelsea in 2001 and Inola in 

2003, Jim and Cindy built Rogers County’s 

first and only crematory in 2003 and provide 

programs and tours to educate the community 

on the cremation process and cremation service 

and burial options. They are members of 

Oklahoma and National Funeral Directors 

Associations and the Cremation Association of 

North America. 

Bottom, left: Paul and Alice Merriott. 

Bottom, right: Jim and Cindy Smith. 


The dedicated staff includes Ryan Payne, a 

Rogers County native, who came as a college 

student in 1993, and Denise Cooper, who joined 

the staff in 1997. Both have degrees in business 

and are licensed funeral directors and embalmers. 

Charlie Bray, funeral director assistant, a 

retired Kansas public school administrator 

joined in 2000. In 2003, joining the firm was 

Frank Friedemann, director of family services 

and a certified grief recovery specialist. 

June Medlock, retired public school teacher, 

has been the Inola office manager since 1996. 

Susan Bickford, with an associate’s degree from 

Rogers State University, has been the Chelsea 

office manager since 2003. 

Jim Smith has been a licensed funeral 

director and embalmer since 1970. Paul 

Merriott has been a licensed funeral director 

and embalmer since 1947. Cindy is the office 

and financial manager. 

Jim and Cindy and staff have a longstanding 

involvement in community and church activities. 

In the last thirty-nine years, Jim and Cindy have 

made many changes and improvements to their 

business to include: 

• Remodeled, rebuilt, and expanded to the three 

locations, Claremore, Chelsea, and Inola; 

• Built a crematory; 

• Additional staff member dedicated to 

family services; 

• Website at www.mmsfuneralhomes.com, 

which is updated daily; 

• Maintains genealogy records dating back 

to 1926; 

• Free seminars to educate the community on 

the cremation process, cremation service and 

burial options; 

• Provides family videos to preserve memories 

included in our services; 

• American Flag collections for Flag Retirement 

Ceremony and Parade on Veterans Day; 

• Holiday Remembrance Candlelight 

Ceremony; and 

• Licensed funeral staff available twenty-four 

hours a day. 

“Our People Make The Difference.” 

❖ 

Above: Jim Smith, Irene Ward, and 

Irene’s daughter, Dana. Irene is the 

wife of the late Rogers County Sherriff 

Amos Ward. 

Below: Left to right: Carlene Webber, 

June Medlock, Pat Reeder, and 

Debbie Cara. 


FROMAN OIL & 

PROPANE CO. 

They remained in the service station business 

until 1972 when they became commissioned 

bulk agents for Skelly Oil Company. They 

survived the oil shortages of the 1970s, faithfully 

applying those old-fashioned “Full Service” 

strategies to the farmers, ranchers, contractors, 

and fuel dealers of Rogers County. Then in the 

mid-’70s they had the opportunity to purchase 

the bulk wholesale business from Skelly Oil Co. 

and Froman Oil Company was born. 

The year was 1962 and newlyweds Bob and 

Donna Froman decided to put what little they 

owned on the line, along with what they could 

beg and borrow, to start their own “Full Service” 

filling station… and those two words say it all 

because, with over forty-seven years experience, 

some things never change. 

In 1979, Skelly Oil Co. had not been able to 

keep a dealer in the old service station located at 

507 East Will Rogers so they offered to sell the 

building to Bob. Once again with hard work and 

quality “Full Service” he rebuilt the business. 

In 1984, Bob, Donna, and their sons, Cary 

and Kevin, realized the wholesale business had 

outgrown the twelve-hundred-square-foot 

building on railroad property in downtown 

Claremore. With no room for expansion it was 

time to grow, so the business moved to its 

present location one and a half miles north of 

Claremore along historic Highway 66 on nearly 

six acres, with a new metal building and 

modern amenities. After settling into a new 

facility, the company expanded into the LP-Gas 

business, followed by the announcement that 

Joshua, the first grandchild, was on the way. 

Today, Froman Oil & Propane Co. still uses 

that “Full Service” pride for doing business by 

working hard to treat customers the way they 


would want to be treated and offering the 

services that they would also want available. 

The company installs and services every 

size tank from 20-pound cylinders to home 

domestic tanks to 30,000-gallon industrial 

tanks, as well as the plumbing, trenching, 

backhoe, and appliance work. Froman Oil & 

Propane Co. offers a large tank yard selling 

not only to the public but to other LP-Gas 

dealers, as well. When Froman Oil & Propane 

Co. advertises “Full Service” they truly mean, 

“We do it all.” 

What began in 1962 with a couple’s desire to 

serve their community has grown into a three 

generation company that is now among the 

largest family-owned, independent propane 

companies in northeastern Oklahoma. With 

that historic full service style, Froman Oil & 

Propane Co. realizes that all of this has been 

made possible due to the loyalty and friendship 

of its customers, friends, family, vendors, 

suppliers, and outstanding employees. 

For more information about Froman Oil 

& Propane Co., please visit the company online 

at www.fropane.com. 


GEA 

RAINEY 

CORPORATION 

Providing quality products and services 

with honesty, integrity, and commitment, GEA 

Rainey Corporation (www.gearainey.com) designs 

and manufactures air-cooled heat exchangers for 

engineering and construction firms, refineries, 

chemical and petrochemical plants, power 

companies and utilities, and other related 

industries worldwide. As a member of GEA 

Group, GEA Rainey has the financial stability 

of a globally diversified organization plus the 

design and manufacturing benefits of our sister 

air-cooled heat exchanger companies located in 

Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, Italy, South 

Africa, China, Qatar, and Brazil. 

supplied shell and tube heat exchangers as well 

as air-cooled heat exchangers for many North 

American refineries and gas pipelines. Consistent 

company growth has occurred since its inception. 

By the mid-1990s, GEA Rainey’s yearly order 

intake averaged $25 million. From 2003 to 2008, 

sales increased two hundred percent. 

The company was founded in Tulsa County in 

1964 by James E. Rainey and Bob Greenwell. In 

1971 the executive team had grown to 

Owner/President James Rainey, Vice President 

Glen Aldredge, and CFO Robert Newkirk. The 

executive offices as well as all manufacturing 

departments except structure were located in 

Tulsa at 4150 South Eighty-Seventh East Avenue, 

while accounting, purchasing, and structure 

were located at 2830 Charles Page Boulevard. 

Prior to the market collapse of the 1980s, the 

late 1960s and ’70s were times of significant 

market opportunity. The Rainey Corporation 

GEA purchased the company in 1978 and it 

was renamed GEA Rainey Corporation. In 1980 all 

departments were moved to Second and Elwood 

and the header and assembly units were relocated 

to 1025 East Latimer. A year later, manufacturing 

moved to the current main building in the Port of 

Catoosa, with half of the building used for 

document storage by American Airlines. 

Currently GEA Rainey occupies four main 

buildings within the Port of Catoosa, employs 

approximately 300 permanent employees, and 

has annual revenue of nearly $90 million. In 

2009, GEA Rainey opened a new facility 

in Lethbridge, Canada. GEA Rainey is one of 

approximately 250 companies, located in 50 

countries, within the GEA Group. 

GEA Rainey includes many landmark 

accomplishments in the field including highly 

custom designs that offer one of the industry’s 

highest pressure air-cooled heat exchangers, 

Dow column top condensers, and a patent 

pending intercooler design for the power 

industry. The company’s manufacturing 

capabilities exceed the competition, with some 

machines even patented, while their global 

competence in thermal design provides quality 

products located around the world. 


Using local and global resources, GEA Rainey 

plans to continue to refine and develop aircooled 

heat exchangers in all industries served. 

All markets are projected to grow as major global 

regions industrialize. Also air-cooled heat 

exchangers are a more environmentally conscious 

heat exchanger over those which use water. 

GEA Rainey Corporation has a substantial 

economic impact on local communities. The 

company is also involved in various employee 

and customer based charitable activities. 


ALL AMERICAN 

FIRE SYSTEMS, 

INC. 

One man, one woman, and faith in one God is 

the foundation of All American Fire Systems, Inc. 

In 1991, Harry Troyer was offered the 

opportunity to manage the fire sprinkler 

division of All American Plumbing & 

Firesprinklers for Hank Johnson. After three 

successful years of managing the business, 

Harry was given the chance to purchase it in 

October of 1994. Initially, Harry and his wife 

Melinda moved the business into the dining 

room of their Claremore residence. Harry did 

the bidding and designing and Melinda kept 

the books. Later, they moved into a portable 

building located next to the house. This became 

more complicated as their family grew and the 

business expanded. They were excited to be able 

to build a nine-hundred-square-foot office. 

Today, they are ecstatic to have a total of 2,500 

square feet of office space and 2,400 square feet 

of shop space. God has been good to them. 

Folks may recognize some of the projects 

that they have worked on, including Belvidere 

Mansion, Rogers State College, Robison 

Performing Arts Center and Claremore Schools. 

These are only a few of the local jobs that AAFS 

has subcontracted. From a personal perspective 

it is humbling to see how far the company 

has progressed. 


The most difficult times in company history 

came in 1998 and 1999. Murphy’s Law took 

center stage. They entered what should have 

been one of their busiest seasons with almost no 

work and their line of credit extended to the 

hilt. They were in a panic and began praying for 

the job schedule to be filled with “day work,” or 

service jobs. They did not have time to wait for 

“contract work” as it can take up to a year from 

the time of bid to get contracts signed, design 

work completed and approved, pipe to be 

fabricated, men scheduled to install and the site 

to be ready. 

Out of the blue, a church in Bartlesville 

called and wanted to know where they were. 

They had bid their project a year before and 

had never received a contract from them. 

Coincidence or answered prayer? Proof came a 

short time later. “Where are you?” the call came 

from a church from Broken Arrow. Again, the 

Troyers had bid the work a year earlier and 

had not received a contract. God was answering 

their prayers. Soon to follow, the pastor of Church 

on the Move authorized them to retrofit a fire 

sprinkler system in his home and released 

several projects at COTM for them to complete. 

God knew their needs before they did and 

began answering them before they asked. 

Even during that dark and scary time, the 

Troyers continued to tithe to their local church. 

Today, they not only tithe personally, but are 

faithful to give from the business as well. This 

money helps facilitate the construction of churches 

in Brazil. It not only helps purchase the materials 

to be used, but also helps to fund volunteers who 

wish to assist with the actual construction. 

All American Fire Systems’ motto continues 

to be “For your earthly protection needs, call on 

All American. For your eternal fire protection 

needs, call on Jesus Christ.” 

All American Fire Systems, Inc., is located at 

21125 East 480 Road in Claremore and on the 

Internet at www.allamericanfiresystems.com. 


AXH 

AIR-COOLERS 

❖ 

Above: Corporate headquarters and 

sales offices in Tulsa. 

Below: The 186,000 square foot 

manufacturing facility is located on 

twelve acres on Lowry Road 

in Claremore. 

Founded in 2001 with almost forty years of 

experience, AXH air-coolers is a leading 

manufacturer of air-cooled heat exchangers, 

primarily for the natural gas compression 

industry. They offer a wide range of models 

and types to fit most any application and 

requirement, which also includes specialized 

designs as well as high performance 

replacement cooling sections to fit and 

improve the performance of coolers built by 

other manufacturers. 

A 1963 graduate of the University of Tulsa 

with a B.S. in engineering, AXH Air-coolers 

founder Ken Jones spent twelve years with 

Air-x-changers (Harsco). In 1976 he 

established Air-x-limited and commenced 

developing the air-cooled heat exchanger 

market in Canada, which included thermal 

design and marketing, encompassing all 

levels of customer support. Air-x-limited 

subsequently grew to become the dominant 

supplier of air-coolers to the Canadian gas 

compression industry. 

In 2001, in conjunction with several 

long-time business associates, he founded 

Air-x-hemphill, which quickly became a major 

supplier of air-coolers to the natural gas 

industry in the United States and Canada. 

In order to meet the continued growth demands 

of the market and customer requirements, 

in late 2004 they formed a new entity in 

which the Air-x-hemphill group became 

AXH Air-coolers. 

Early 2005 saw a change in both philosophy 

and direction which involved a major expansion 

with the acquisition of a 139,000-square-foot 

manufacturing facility on a twelve-acre site 

adjacent to historic Route 66 in Claremore, 

which was expanded to 186,000 square feet 

between 2005 and 2008. The year 2008 was 

another period of major expansion in which 

AXH air-coolers purchased an additional 

thirteen acre site in the adjoining Claremore 

Industrial Park for future expansion along with 

the acquisition of a second manufacturing 

facility, Plant 2, in the Verdigris Industrial Park 

on East 520 Road. 

In less than four years the local work force 

increased from 20 in early 2005 to more than 

400 employees in 2008. AXH President Ken 

Jones attributes the company’s growth 

and success to the hard work and dedication 

of the many outstanding individuals in the 

organization. The other principals of the 

company include C. F. (Nick) Breese, 

Rick Grapengater, Jim Pendleton, Dave Watkins, 

Jim Lynch, Billy Hammer, Les Watkins, and 

Mike Barros. 


Clem McSpadden was truly a son of the west. 

His paternal great grandfather Clem Rogers established 

a trading post in Rogers County before the 

Civil War and his maternal great grandmother 

translated the Bible into the Cherokee language. 

McSpadden was born in Bushyhead, grew up in 

Oologah, and served in the military before being 

elected to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1955, 

where he formed and chaired the first 

Congressional Rural Caucus, representing both 

Democrats and Republicans. He served as president 

of the Oklahoma State Senate and was an exofficio 

trustee of the National Cowboy Hall of 

Fame in the 1970s. In 2008 he was the recipient of 

the prestigious Chester A. Reynolds Award. He 

served on several bank boards and the Cherokee 

Nation United Way, and received numerous 

awards including the 2005 National FFA American 

Award; OSU Outstanding Alumni Award; OSU 

Hall of Fame Award; Inductee into the Oklahoma 

Hall of Fame; National Cowboy and Western 

Heritage Museum Rodeo Historical Society; first 

recipient of the Ben Johnson Award; PRCA Notable 

honoree, and has been honored with the Clem 

McSpadden Endowed Scholarship at OSU. 

He was also the recipient of the 2008 

Distinguished Alumni Award, Ag Science at OSU, 

and the Clem McSpadden Endowed Chair for 

Youth Leadership at OSU. Clem created the 

Chelsea Essay Scholarship as in 2008 for Junior 

High students to preserve local history through 

first person interviews. 

McSpadden was the first inductee of the 

Claremore Will Rogers Rodeo “Legends of Rodeo” 

Hall of Fame; the Dodge City Hall of Fame; and the 

Vinita Hall of Fame, and was named Claremore 

“Man of the Year.” He was designated U.S. announcer 

for the Challenge Cup at the Olympics in Calgary 

and was the first from the United States to announce 

the Calgary Stampede and the Canadian National 

Finals. McSpadden served as general manager of the 

National Finals Rodeo for eighteen years, and was 

general manager of the Indian National Finals. 

In 1983, McSpadden established ropings at the 

family’s Bushyhead Ranch and proceeds from the 

World’s Richest Roping & Western Art Show provided 

scholarships for Chelsea graduates and funded 

a major portion of the Chelsea Public Library, 

established through McSpadden’s wife, Donna. 

In 1983, Clem formed the McSpadden & 

Associates LLC consulting firm and was joined by 

his son, Bart, in 1995. Bart attended undergraduate 

school at the University of the South in Tennessee 

and obtained his law degree from the University of 

Oklahoma. Bart, Kate, and their children Noah, 

Chloe, Tucker, and Luke, live in Edmond. 

Regarding his historic career in politics, Clem 

wrote, “Maybe the most important votes I cast 

included creating the rural water districts, establishing 

bilingual tests for Oklahoma drivers 

licensing; author of Green Country Tourism for 

Eastern Oklahoma; getting funding for building 

and maintaining lake access roads. It was a personal 

thrill to save thousands of dollars in relocating 

the Will Rogers home when the family gave it 

to the State. Having many personal visits with J. 

M. Davis and Governor Henry Bellmon in our 

home to discuss the agreement to create the J. M. 

Davis Memorial Foundation was good. Davis 

sealed the agreement with a handshake, which 

I still think is better than any written contract. 

“Donna and I are fortunate to have lived and 

been raised in families where all recognize God is 

the Supreme Being and to live accordingly; where 

‘family’ means two or more caring for each other; 

community means working together to do what 

needs done for all; and lying down at night asking 

God to care for those unable to care for themselves, 

give food to the hungry, water to those that thirst, 

and thanking Him for all we are and all we have.” 

Donna’s accomplishments are equally impressive. 

She has served as Marshal of the Oklahoma 

Court of Criminal Appeals; produced the State 

Capitol Talent Show benefiting March of Dimes, 

wrote and edited the Capitol Comment paper; 

worked for Foyil Public Schools implementing 

the Head Start program and was the leading force 

to permit Chelsea to be included in wide-area 

calling and named “Volunteer of the Year” for the 

three million volunteer women in the U.S. and its 

territories in 1983. 

Donna was president of the Chelsea Chamber of 

Commerce; named “Citizen of the Year”; and was 

on the first Governor’s Commission on the Status of 

Women. She was producer of the National Finals 

Rodeo Ladies Day. Currently she is a member of the 

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum 

Rodeo Historical Society Board of Directors, and 

immediate Past President. Donna is also the president 

and founder of HANDS, a group of fifty 

women throughout the U.S. who provide needs to 

families in the ranch and rodeo industry. 

CLEM AND 

DONNA 

MCSPADDEN 

FAMILY 


LAFARGE 

❖ 

Above: Located in northeast Tulsa at 

Apache and 145th East Avenue, the 

Lafarge Tulsa Cement Plant has been 

operating since 1961. 

Below: The Lafarge Tulsa Cement 

Plant is currently comprised of two 

wet kilns, with an average annual 

clinker capacity of 587,000 tons, 

or roughly thirty-six percent of the 

state capacity of approximately 1.6 

million tons. 

A world-class operation dedicated to serving 

its customers, communities and employees, the 

Lafarge Tulsa Cement Plant continues a tradition 

of excellence that began nearly a half century ago. 

Located at Apache and North 145th East Avenue, 

the plant has been producing materials for the 

construction industry since 1961. Frank and 

Herbert Tyler founded the Dewey Portland 

Cement Company in Dewey, Oklahoma, in 1907. 

When the Tulsa Cement Plant opened in 1961, 

Dewey was a division of industrial products 

giant American-Marietta Company. Forty years 

later, Lafarge acquired the 

Tulsa Plant from Blue 

Circle Industries. 

The creation of cement 

begins in the quarry, 

located just north of the 

plant. Lafarge employees 

quarry limestone, which 

is crushed and transported 

by a conveyor 

system. The raw materials 

are mixed and heated to 

over twenty-six hundred 

degrees Fahrenheit in the 

kiln to become clinker. 

The clinker is cooled, 

mixed with gypsum and 

ground into a fine powder 

known as Portland 

cement, which is pumped 

into storage silos for 

shipping and distribution. 

This process keeps the 

kilns operating around 

the clock resulting in a total grind capacity of 

811,000 tons. 

High quality cement from the Tulsa plant has 

helped build Oklahoma including the Cherokee 

Turnpikes, additions to Saint Francis Hospital 

and St. John’s Medical Center and the BOK 

Center in downtown Tulsa. 

Over the years, Lafarge has made steady 

advances in environmental by developing and 

successfully implementing strategies and 

programs designed to preserve and protect 

the environment. It also supports preservation 

through the Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma, 

and the wildlife restoration and conservation 

initiatives of environmental groups such as 

the Wildlife Habitat Council and the World 

Wildlife Fund. 

The Lafarge Tulsa Cement Plant supports 

numerous local nonprofit and business 

organizations. Beginning in the summer of 

2008, the Lafarge Tulsa Cement Plant began 

the Oklahoma Rocks & Minerals Program to 

match Oklahoma’s curriculum requirements for 

fifth-grade earth science-based programs with 

employee instruction and a field trip to plant 

with a lesson and fossil hunt. 

For more company and product information 

please visit the Lafarge North America 

website at www.lafargenorthamerica.com or 

call 918-437-3902. 

Established in 1833, Lafarge has grown to 

become the world leader in building materials 

including cement, gypsum, roofing, aggregates 

and concrete. The company employs more than 

90,000 people in over 76 countries and more 

than 2,000 production sites. 


MOLLY’S 

LANDING 

“Stepping across rocks and bricks past the 

old red canoe…opening the squeaky door 

you enter a rambling log cabin down by 

the Verdigris River between Catoosa and 

Claremore…only fifteen minutes from downtown 

Tulsa.” With that, guests enter the world of 

Molly’s Landing, a one-of-a-kind steak and 

seafood restaurant that opened in 1984 and has 

enjoyed great success in the region for a quarter 

of a century. 

The historic restaurant’s owner, Linda Powell, 

and her two sons are avid collectors and have 

decorated the cabin with unique pieces from 

their own collection, making the 

dining experience as exciting for 

the eye as it is for the stomach. 

Murder mystery dinner shows are 

offered twice monthly and the fine 

assortment of delicacies includes 

seafood, quail, and steaks—including 

the signature 1872 Ribeye, an 

authentic recipe from the chuck 

wagon days along the Chisholm 

Trail. The 160-seat restaurant also 

boasts a helicopter pad, a wine list, 

full service bar, free Internet access, 

and a gift shop called the Chicken 

Coop, which features jewelry, 

pottery, and other knick-knacks. 

Powell’s two sons, Russ White and 

Doug Powell, oversee the day to 

day operations of Molly’s Landing, 

while Linda enjoys sharing the 

responsibility of overlooking the 

dining room and greeting customers. 

In keeping with the rustic riverside 

atmosphere, the menu offerings are listed on 

handcrafted steel binders. Five kinds of freshbaked 

bread are brought out before the meal 

and each entrée includes a baked potato 

and salad. With Molly’s famous bread pudding 

for dessert, one Southern Living reviewer wrote, 

“There’s a slight risk you’ll have to be floated out 

of Molly’s Landing like so much barge freight on 

the Verdigris. But at least you won’t have trouble 

finding an old paddle to propel yourself.” 

For more information about Molly’s Landing, 

visit them online at www.mollyslanding.com. 


EDWARD JONES 

INVESTMENTS 

❖ 

Financial Advisor Terry Chase in 

front of the Claremore, Oklahoma, 

office with Senior Office 

Administrators Lynn Ashbaugh and 

Lee Ann McGill. 

Among the nation’s most prominent and 

historic companies stands Edward Jones, an 

investment firm whose philosophy of outstanding, 

personalized service to the individual has 

directed its success for nearly a century. 

Founded by Edward D. Jones, Sr., in 1922, the 

company began investing itself in the life of rural 

America when Jones’ son, Ted, who was working a 

rural territory in Missouri and Illinois, realized the 

growing need for specialists in providing local, 

personalized investment advice. 

Today, that historic idea includes over 11,000 

offices in all 50 states plus Canada and the United 

Kingdom—more than any other brokerage firm in 

the nation—serving more than seven million 

clients, and making Edward Jones one of a few 

firms helping individual investors exclusively. 

Wall Street officially came to Main Street in 

Rogers County with the grand opening of Edward 

Jones in Claremore in 1982. The office was moved 

to the current location, originally a full-service gas 

station and later Claremore Cable Television at 

301 West Will Rogers Boulevard in 1990. 

Terry L. Chase, a financial advisor with Edward 

Jones since 1989, has managed the Claremore 

office since 1993 with Senior Office Administrators 

Lee Ann McGill and Lynn Ashbaugh. During his 

visionary leadership, Jones was determined to give 

the firm to employees through partnerships, 

enabling Terry and Lee Ann to serve as limited 

partners in the company. 

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Terry is a 

graduate of Oklahoma State University and 

served in the Oklahoma Army National Guard. 

He and his wife, Robin, have been married for 

twenty-two years and have two daughters, 

Madison and Lauren. Terry comments, “Robin 

and I had the opportunity to choose this 

community as the place we wanted to live, work 

and raise a family, and for that decision, we have 

been blessed.” 

Terry has been active in many areas of 

service to the community including the City 

of Claremore, Leadership Oklahoma, Claremore 

Area Chamber of Commerce, Claremore United 

Way, Rogers County Oklahoma State University 

Alumni Association, and Claremore Rotary Club. 

The legacy of Edward Jones is best 

memorialized in a historic response to a question 

once posed to Ted Jones. When asked why he was 

not interested in taking the company public and 

becoming a multi-millionaire, Ted wrote, “I am the 

richest man in America. I have a wife who loves 

me in spite of my faults. I have four dogs. Two love 

only me. One loves everybody. One loves no one, 

but still is very loyal and follows me everywhere I 

go on the farm. I have a horse I love to ride around 

the farm, and best of all, she comes to me when I 

call her. I have too much to eat and a dry place to 

sleep. I enjoy my business. I love my farm and my 

home. I have a few close friends, and money has 

never been my God.” 


Located along Historic Route 66 at 1709 

North Lynn Riggs Boulevard, Claremore Motor 

Inn has been family owned and operated 

since 1994 and offers travelers a wide variety 

of amenities at bargain prices. In each of the 

motel’s clean, spacious rooms or suites, guests 

will find a comfortable king or queen bed to 

ensure a good night’s rest, an AM/FM alarm 

clock to wake them in time for the free 

continental breakfast, and an Internet 

connection, provided free to every guest staying 

in the motel. At the end of a long day on the 

road, guests can unwind in front of the twentyfive 

inch television while they rest up for an 

adventure at one of the many attractions in 

Claremore and the surrounding areas. 

Other amenities include a fitness center, 

free newspapers, free local calls, wake-up 

call service, special rooms for non-smokers, 

interior/exterior corridor room entrances, 

twenty-four hour staffed front desk and 

switchboard, express check-out, laundry and 

dry cleaning, free parking and truck and 

bus parking. Especially suited for business 

travel are amenities including fax and copy 

machine service, a meeting room on-site 

and daily maid service. Families will appreciate 

the microwaves, refrigerators, iron and hair 

dryers in each room, as well as the available rollaway 

bed. 

Claremore, the hometown of the late 

humorist Will Rogers, and the surrounding 

areas offer a variety of attractions to make any 

trip memorable, including the JM Davis Arms 

& Historical Museum, Will Rogers Memorial 

Museum, Belvidere Mansion, Lynn Riggs 

Memorial, and Totem Pole Park. Sports 

enthusiasts will enjoy Country Club Lanes, 

Heritage Hills Public Golf Course, Oologah 

Lake, Will Rogers Downs/Cottonwood Racing 

Corp., Will Rogers Raceway, Inc., and American 

Legion Ballpark. Those seeking arts will 

appreciate the Inn’s close proximity to Sandra 

Van Zandt Art Sculptures, Rogers State 

University Conservation Education Reserve, and 

the Performing Arts Center, which is directly 

across the street from the Inn. 

Whether it is relaxation, inspiration, 

education, or just plain fun, Claremore Motor 

Inn has so much to offer! 

CLAREMORE 

MOTOR INN 


A. M. HUFFMAN 

COMPANY 

A. M. Huffman first came to Claremore in the 

mid-1940s while working for a bank in Kansas 

that held the mortgage on the Historic Mason 

Hotel property, once owned and operated by 

the late J. M. Davis. The property included the 

hotel, coffee shop and numerous small shops 

located at street level along Will Rogers Boulevard 

at the intersection of Route 66. Huffman worked 

with Davis to continue the bank’s financing on the 

hotel. Huffman enjoyed the Claremore area so 

much that he decided to stay and open a business 

in one of the small shops within the hotel block. 

Huffman specialized in real estate, loans 

and insurance. As an avid horseman he supported 

the local Will Rogers Round Up Club Rodeo for 

many years while being a friend and community 

leader, serving in posts such as councilman and 

planning and zoning commission member. 

In 1966, Ann Womack Gwartney went to work 

for Huffman as his secretary/bookkeeper. Though 

she soon obtained her Real Estate Broker’s license 

and sold several homes, she remained loyal to her 

original position. Huffman appraised properties 

for the United States Government such as the Port 

Of Catoosa and the proposed Black Fox Nuclear 

Facility, and continued to sell and appraise many 

privately owned properties during his nearly 

thirty years in business. 

Upon Huffman’s death in 1974, Ann assisted 

his heirs in concluding Huffman’s business and 

personal affairs. She then purchased the business 

and joined her brother, the late Ira. M. Green, 

in renovating a small house in the downtown 

area into an office with parking, sidewalks, and 

signage for the new A. M. Huffman Company. 

As the company grew, Ann’s daughter, Paula 

Hughes, began working as a Broker/Associate 

while Ann’s son, Mark Hughes, came to work 

full time in 1991. Recently the company 

welcomed Claremore agents Brad and Penny 

Keller, outstanding sales people who are truly a 

joy to work with. 

Today, A. M. Huffman Company continues to 

work with many estate properties selling large 

parcels of land and quality properties, and 

helps individuals selling small to large homes, 

acreages and commercial properties as well as 

those needing appraisals. It remains Rogers 

County’s oldest continually operated real estate 

company and celebrated sixty-three years of 

service on January 1, 2009, and is small and 

family-owned—a place where “clients become 

best friends and friends become best clients.” 


ROGERS COUNTY 

HISTORICAL 

SOCIETY 

❖ 

Left: Belvidere Mansion. 

Below: Totem Pole Park. 

The Rogers County Historical Society is 

dedicated to the collection, preservation, and 

dissemination of the history of Rogers County. 

Part of that mission has included the preservation 

of local landmarks. 

Among the famous restored landmarks is the 

Belvidere Mansion. This remarkable brick threestory 

nine-thousand-square-foot Victorian mansion 

was built during 1902-07 by John Bayless. Visitors 

to the mansion will see beautiful wood parquet and 

tile floors and marble and pressed tin walls as well 

as pressed tin ceilings. Sadly, Bayless, an 

entrepreneur involved in banking, railroads and 

real estate development, died before the mansion 

was completed. The Belvidere Mansion is located at 

121 North Chickasaw in Claremore. 

The Lynn Riggs Museum is located at 121 

North Weenonah, near the Belvidere Mansion. 

The musical Oklahoma was based on Lynn Riggs 

play Green Grow The Lilacs. The original “surrey 

with the fringe on top” along with other Oklahoma 

memorabilia can be seen there. 

The six-story Will Rogers Center is a stately 

landmark on the corner of Highway 66 and 

Will Rogers Boulevard. It was opened as a hotel 

named after Will Rogers in February 7, 1930. It 

was renovated into senior citizen apartments in 

1997; however, the hotel lobby, mezzanine, and 

some of the original bathtubs on the sixth floor 

are open for viewing by the public. 

Approximately ten miles north of 

Claremore on Highway 66 is the town of 

Foyil. Totem Pole Park is located approximately 

four miles east of the town of 

Foyil on Highway 28A. Totem Pole Park 

is a beautiful nine-acre park that contains 

the world’s tallest Totem Pole and many 

other totems. The park was built during 

1937-1948 by Ed Galloway as a monument 

to the American Indian. The park 

also has a small building known as the 

“Fiddle House.” It houses a large display 

of Ed’s handcrafted fiddles and inlaid 

wood artifacts. 

The Belvidere Mansion, Will Rogers 

Center, and Totem Pole Park are all listed 

on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The Rogers County Historical Society 

is located at 121 North Chickasaw, 

Claremore, Oklahoma, 74017. For more 

information, please call (918) 342-1127 

or visit rogerscountyhistory.org. 


SHAW LAW 

FIRM 

❖ 

Above: Bill Shaw with wife, Linda and 

two daughters Ashley Bruce and 

Erinn Shaw-Bisceglia. 

Born to Lewie and Alice Shaw on July 22, 

1948, in Claremore, Oklahoma, Bill and 

younger brother Glenn grew up on a farm in 

Inola, Oklahoma. Upon graduation from 

Claremore High School in 1966, Bill attended 

Northeastern State College (now Northeastern 

State University) and received his double 

bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology 

in 1970. While attending college, Bill met 

his wife Linda Smith and they were married 

in 1969. After earning his undergraduate 

degrees, Bill briefly worked as a social worker 

at the Rogers County Department of 

Human Services before serving in the United 

States Army. 

When he returned from his duty in 

Anchorage, Alaska, Bill began his career in the 

legal realm as a juvenile officer at the Juvenile 

Bureau District Court in Tulsa County. It was 

during this time that Bill completed his master’s 

degree in sociology from Oklahoma State 

University before ultimately deciding to attend 

law school at the University of Tulsa. 

Subsequent to passing the Oklahoma Bar 

Examination, Bill worked in Tulsa County as an 

assistant district attorney. He then went on to 

serve as an associate at Chapel, Wilkinson, Riggs 

and Abney Law Firm before returning back to 

his roots in Rogers County. Bill was employed as 

an assistant district attorney for Rogers, Mayes 

and Craig Counties for several years before 

being appointed as a District Judge in the 

Twelfth Judicial District. 

Bill’s many years of expertise in the legal 

profession finally lead him to private practice in 

1994 returning to the general practice of law. 

Following in her father’s footsteps, daughter 

Erinn Shaw-Bisceglia also began her own law 

practice in 1999. Since then, the two of them 

have worked in the legal profession at 319 West 

First Street in Claremore. For questions, please 

contact the Shaw Law Firm at (918)-343-2468. 

Right: The Shaw Law Firm has 

provided legal expertise to the 

Claremore community since 1994. 

Office staff pictured left to right: Judy 

Standridge, Sarah Behm, Bill Shaw 

(seated), Erinn Shaw-Bisceglia and 

Helen Riggs. 


John D. Williams has provided real estate 

brokerage advisory services to a diversified group 

of private and public companies/entities including 

the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, 

Port of Catoosa, City of Claremore, and numerous 

property owners, developers, banks and savings 

and loans, and corporate clients for over 

forty years. Consulting services have included 

performing brokerage/leasing services, investment 

analysis, and workouts for financial investments/redevelopment 

analysis. Williams has also 

served for many years as a licensed appraiser and 

as an expert witness in numerous trials. 

Prior to founding his own firm, Williams 

worked in Tulsa as a commercial broker for 

Whiteside and Grant, Realtors. Williams was 

primarily involved with analyzing real estate 

for financing and investment potential. This 

included reviewing appraisals, market analysis 

data, rent rolls, absorption rates, and sales data 

for retail, residential subdivisions, industrial, 

and for site locations for major corporations. 

After several years with Whiteside and Grant, 

Williams was hired to create and lead the real 

estate brokerage division for Frates Properties in 

Tulsa. During a two-year period, Frates Properties 

became nationally known for its developments 

and acquisitions throughout the United States. 

Williams founded the John Williams Company 

in 1969 primarily as a residential real estate 

company, which grew at a rate of 20 percent per 

year until reaching nearly a 60 to 70 percent 

market share for several years. He attributes the 

company’s success to Lin Wiggs and his wife, the 

late Judy Wiggs. Williams says, “In my opinion, 

Lin and Judy were the two best real estate 

managers in the industry. It was because of their 

loyalty, hard work, and commitment that allowed 

him to branch into the commercial site location 

and development business.” 

Williams also attributes his company’s success 

to honesty, integrity, and hard work. Great 

mentors have included Frank Robson, the late 

Phil Viles, Frank Podpechan, and Ed Keller. 

Daughter Suzanne Mullen and son John Williams, 

Jr., were also trained in the field, and personal 

secretary Joann Doty has been “a lifesaver.” 

An economics and business administration 

graduate of Northeastern State University in 

Tahlequah, Williams brings over forty years of 

experience and education in various aspects 

of the real estate industry, and has been involved 

in the analysis of a wide variety of property 

types, both locally as well as nationally. He 

is a licensed Real Estate Broker in Oklahoma, 

Kansas, and Arkansas. Williams has also served 

as an instructor in Real Estate courses at Rogers 

State University in Claremore. 

Williams served several terms as chairman 

of the Rogers County Planning Commission, 

Claremore Chamber of Commerce board 

member, Rogers County Bank board member, 

administrative board and finance chairman 

for the United Methodist Church of Claremore, 

chairman of the United Way for Rogers County, 

and numerous other community activities. 

Today, the John D. Williams Company 

combines disciplines of appraisal, marketing, 

development, construction, and planning to 

form a “cross-over” perspective in the real estate 

business. This unique style offers the ability “to 

see the opportunities, as well as the problems.” 

JOHN WILLIAMS 

COMPANY, INC. 


DAYS INN 

CLAREMORE 

Days Inn Claremore was built in 1997. In 

2000, Days Inn Claremore was purchased by 

owner/operator Doug Maddux, who recognized 

that Claremore was becoming progressive 

and desired to be a part of the community. Its 

current parent company, Lightning Creek 

Investment Group, out of Nowata, Oklahoma, 

was founded in 1987. Its other investments 

include assisted living centers, nursing homes, 

and other ventures. 

Days Inn was created by Cecil B. Day in 

1970, when his first hotel opened in Tybee Island, 

Georgia. His Atlanta-based company, Days Inns 

of America, Inc., began franchising hotels in 

1972 and within eight years created a system 

of more than 300 hotels in the United States 

and Canada. In 1992, Wyndham Hotel Group 

acquired Days Inns of America and its name was 

changed to Days Inn Worldwide on March 31, 

2000, to reflect its increasing global presence. 

Located at 1720 South Lynn Riggs Boulevard, 

Days Inn Claremore is a suburban hotel 

property, which provides dependable comfort 

at affordable rates for leisure travelers and 

seniors on a budget. Its fifty-eight rooms all 

have interior access and suites are available. 

Amenities include in-room coffee service, 

outdoor pool, hair dryer, iron and ironing 

board, free USA Today, free high-speed Internet 

and local calls, boat hook-ups, and microfridges. 

There are a large selection of restaurants 

within walking distance, shopping and antique 

mall nearby, as well as the Cherokee Casino, 

Rogers State University, and Will Rogers 

Museum & Memorial. 

Days Inn offers the best value for priceconscious 

leisure and business travelers. Guests 

find comfortable, appealing rooms, consistent 

quality and friendly, courteous service backed by 

the Days Inn Sunsational Service Commitment. 

The improved complimentary DayBreak ® 

Breakfast is a fresh and delicious way for guests 

to begin each day. Days Inn does all it can do to 

ensure that wherever its guests travel, they will 

always have an exceptional experience. 

For more information or to make reservations 

at Days Inn Claremore, please visit the hotel 

online at www.daysinn.com/hotel/04934. 


It has been over seventy-three years since 

our first branch opened, and RCB Bank is 

still growing stronger each day. With 20 

branches statewide, over 400 employees and 

assets totaling over $1.3 billion, RCB Bank is 

one of the largest banks in Oklahoma. 

But what really sets RCB Bank apart from 

its competitors is service. RCB was one of 

the first ten banks in the country to offer 

online banking. It was also one of the first 

to offer remote deposit capture and rewards 

checking—all of these products help to 

make daily banking more convenient for its 

customers. With the addition of RCB Wealth 

Management and Trust 

Services, business banking 

tools and mortgage 

solutions, RCB Bank can 

service its customers’ 

financial needs through 

all stages of life. 

But first and foremost, 

RCB Bank is a true 

community bank. Deeply 

rooted in Claremore and 

several other Oklahoma 

communities, RCB Bank 

not only gives attention 

to customer’s needs, but 

to the needs of each community 

it serves. With 

promotions and programs 

to raise awareness and 

fight cancer through Relay for Life and other 

community sponsorships, the RCB Bank family is 

part of your family. We pride ourselves on serving 

the needs of our friends, families and neighbors. 

RCB Bank has locations in Pryor, Claremore, 

Owasso, Catoosa, Collinsville, Skiatook, Inola, 

Broken Arrow, Ponca City, Edmond, and its 

newest branch inside the Claremore Wal-Mart 

Super Center. And now with online banking 

at www.rcbbank.com and mobile banking 

available on your mobile phone, RCB can be 

everywhere you are. 

Rogers County Bank 

opened its doors for business 

on Saturday, January 4, 

1936, at 9:00 a.m. The bank 

was located on the corner 

of Will Rogers Boulevard 

and Missouri Avenue in 

downtown Claremore. After 

its first year of constant and 

steady growth, the officers 

and directors of Rogers 

County Bank adopted as 

their motto: “This Bank is growing every day! 

Are you growing with us?” 

The ensuing decades would bring substantial 

growth and many changes in banking. By 

the 1990s, the bank topped $100 million. In 

January 1990 the name of the bank holding 

company was changed to RCB Bank Holding 

Company and became RCB Bank. 

RCB Bank continues to grow not only in 

size, but also in spirit, expanding our offerings 

to best serve those in our communities. The 

dream of those first directors in December 

1935 has been realized. Are you growing 

with us? 

RCB BANK 

❖ 

Above: RCB Bank building sketched 

in 1955. 

Below: Ted McGuire, Frank C. 

Robson, and Dr. Richard Mosier. 


HEALTHY 

SMILES FAMILY 

DENTISTRY 

AND 

GREEN COUNTRY 

SCHOOL OF 

DENTAL 

ASSISTING 

Founded in Claremore in July of 1994 by Dr. 

Lori Hare, Healthy Smiles Family Dentistry, home 

of Green Country School of Dental Assisting, 

is comprised of professional, caring individuals 

who believe in using state-of-the-art dentistry to 

achieve quality care in a gentle environment. 

Dr. Hare first opened her dental practice 

by leasing a one room operatory in the Brace 

Place orthodontics office on Blue Starr Drive. 

The practice grew quickly and was moved to its 

current location in the Mason Center at 600 

West Will Rogers Boulevard in 1995. 

In 1996, Dr. Hare was joined by her former 

classmate, Dr. Billie Reeder, who worked as an 

associate in the practice before joining Dr. Hare 

in forming Healthy Smiles Family Dentistry as a 

professional partnership in 1998. 

Healthy Smiles is in the process of building a 

brand new, state-of-the-art dental facility at 201 

North Lynn Riggs, just one block north of its 

current location. The new office is scheduled to 

open in early 2010. 

Lori Hare, DDS, FAGD, received her Doctor of 

Dental Surgery in 1993 from the University 

of Oklahoma and completed the program in 

advanced education in general dentistry from the 

University of Oklahoma in 1994. She was awarded 

the Oklahoma Dental Association’s “Young Dentist 

of the Year” Award in 1995 and was presented the 

Fellowship Award of the Academy of General 

Dentistry in 2006. Dr. Hare is a member of the 

American Dental Association, the Rogers County 

Dental Society, the Tulsa County Dental Society, 

and the Oklahoma Academy of Cosmetic 

Dentistry. She resides in Tulsa with her husband 

Todd and their son Colin. 

Billie Reeder, RDH, DDS, received her Doctor 

of Dental Surgery from the University of 

Oklahoma in 1993 and is a member of the 

Southeastern Dental Society, the Oklahoma 

Dental Association, the American Dental 

Association, the Academy of General Dentistry, 

the Tulsa County Dental Society and Omicron 

Kappa Upsilon honorary dental society. She 

resides in Collinsville with her husband Tony 

and their daughter, Kaleigh. 

In September 2000, Healthy Smiles began 

operating Green Country School of Dental 

Assisting, a fully licensed private vocational 

school that trains students to become qualified 

dental assistants through an intensive hands-on 

twelve week program. 

Healthy Smiles offers a complete spectrum of 

general dentistry services including cosmetic, 

restorative and surgical treatment using only the 

most advanced techniques that include digital 

radiography and laser instrumentation, and also 

offers micropigmentation services (permanent 

make-up). Healthy Smiles has an incredible 

staff of professionals including an associate 

dentist, several hygienists, dental assistants, 

office professionals and instructors for the 

dental assisting school. 

Healthy Smiles’ involvement in the local 

community includes participation in Eastern 

Oklahoma Donated Dental Services, an 

organization that provides free dental services 

to indigent residents of Eastern Oklahoma, 

support to Blue Star Mothers and a local 

congregation’s mission efforts through the 

donation of dental care packages to be shipped 

overseas, along with dental educational support 

to local schools. 

Healthy Smiles is also located in the 

Brookside office complex at 1326 East Forty- 

Third Court, Suite 100 in Tulsa and online at 

www.thehealthysmiles.com. 


The City of Claremore is a full-service 

municipality that strives to provide its citizens 

the best comprehensive community services 

possible. The city operates under the councilmanager 

form of government where the city 

manager is responsible for all day-to-day 

operations, while the mayor and eight-member 

council serve as the policy-making body. 

There are over twenty departments in the 

city, all committed to providing and maintaining 

an exceptional living environment. The City of 

Claremore owns and operates its own electric, 

water, sewer, and stormwater utilities. Other 

departments include police, fire, animal control, 

public infrastructure, and parks and recreation. 

In order to create a more sustainable 

Claremore for future generations, infrastructure 

repairs and upgrades are a major focus of 

Claremore’s current administration. The city 

is moving forward with construction plans 

for a new wastewater treatment facility, 

continued traffic improvements including 

an elevated railroad track, utility system 

improvements and community beautification 

and revitalization efforts. 

As the seat of Rogers County, Claremore 

serves as a regional hub for many goods and 

services. The City of Claremore is currently 

working to recruit more retail and economic 

development to the Claremore area. The city has 

recently helped recruit a developer with plans to 

build a one-of-a-kind lifestyle center featuring 

shopping, dining, entertainment, and residential 

amenities. The $110-million center is the largest 

private development in Claremore’s history. 

Quality of life is also a major focus of the 

city of Claremore administration. Recreation 

opportunities abound in Claremore. The city’s 

parks system is recognized as one of the finest 

in Oklahoma. Parks are accessible in every area 

of the city including sports complexes, tennis 

courts, ball fields, a skate park, playground 

equipment, recreation center with indoor 

swimming pool, walking, biking and off-road 

trails. Family activities like scenic strolls, 

fishing, boating, and picnics can be enjoyed on 

beautiful Claremore Lake. 

Please visit the City of Claremore’s website at 

www.claremorecity.com for more information on 

what Claremore has to offer. 

CITY OF 

CLAREMORE 


INOLA HEALTH CARE CENTER 

Incorporated by Howard and Pam Childers 

in 1988, construction of the sixty-five bed, long 

term Inola Health Care Center (IHCC) began in 

1989 and opened to guests on August 20, 1990. 

The facility is home to everyone from young 

adults to octogenarians, as well as those 

dependent on respiratory ventilations. 

The Childers family moved to Inola from 

Tulsa in 1984. Howard had sold medical/ 

surgical products for 20 years and Pam had been 

an LPN for 20 years, but saw a need 

in the community to reach out to the aged 

who wanted to stay in their hometown for long 

term care. 

With no idea as to what was involved in 

building, owning, and operating a healthcare 

clinic, they decided it was the direction in 

which God was leading them. Pam had worked 

in a facility in Stillwater and had contact with 

Gary Smart, who was still in the field and 

helped with the application that was made with 

the state of Oklahoma in preparation to go 

before the Certificate of Need board to prove the 

necessity of such a facility for their community. 

The Childers won their hearing, and as other 

seemingly insurmountable obstacles were met, 

the good Lord continued to open doors and 

place the right people in their path. 

Before the construction started, Howard began 

Nursing Home Administrators school at the 

University of Oklahoma in Norman and attended 

the one-day-a-week program for the year and 

received his Long Term Care Administrators 

License. Pam had started her classes at Rogers 

State University for Registered Nurse in 1989; she 

graduated nine months after the Center opened, 

and became director of nurses. 

In the beginning, Howard continued to work 

for Mid-Continent Surgical Supply two days a 

week to meet the family’s household needs…it 

was eighteen months before a paycheck would 

start coming from IHCC. In the first months, the 

couple worked long hours and it was not 

uncommon for Pam to work twenty-four and 

forty-eight hour stretches to make sure the 

Center had sufficient nurses in the house. 

The Childers’ boys, Rory and Cody, grew up 

in the business and would often play cards with 

the residents or read to them. Today, Rory is a 

Licensed Administrator at the facility. 

The Center has one employee, Mary Gail 

Moore, LPN, who has been with the Childers 

since the beginning. Following close behind 

is Activity Director Darlene Shear, C.N.A., and 

CMA certified. Several of the over fifty 

employees, mostly from the community and 

surrounding area, have been with them for 

many years, and the annual payroll is over 

$1 million. 


Air-X-Changers (AXC), a world leader in gas 

compression cooler manufacturing, has served 

the industry since 1952. The original operation, 

Carr Engineering Company, was headed by 

Murray Carr, an engineer-entrepreneur, along 

with associates Ralph Eads and Walter Perkins, 

who handled sales and engineering services. 

During 1954, Carr Engineering Company was 

incorporated as Air-X-Changers and became the 

first manufacturer of air-cooled heat exchangers 

to offer a totally reliable, empirically derived 

performance rating system. 

From its earliest beginning in a Tulsa 

garage, AXC moved to its current location at the 

Port of Catoosa in 1975 and became a division 

of Harsco Corporation; a $4-billion diversified 

global industrial services and engineered 

products company in 1976. 

Today, AXC has expanded into over three 

hundred thousand square feet of manufacturing 

facility housed in four separate plants in the 

Tulsa area, double the space it had in 1988. 

Available in a full range of models, types 

and configurations, AXC coolers protect 

gas compression equipment and control the 

conditioning of natural gas from the wellhead 

through compression, processing and delivery 

through pipeline distribution systems. The 

company also produces lube oil cooling systems 

tailored to the needs of turbine operators, 

and has adapted its designs for use in power 

generation, landfill gas compression and 

other applications. In addition, Air-X-Changers 

manufactures cooler replacement components— 

not just for units produced by AXC, but for any 

make and model of cooler in service. 

With more than a half-century of service to 

the industry, it is no surprise that the employees 

of Air-X-Changers have a passion for their 

work. Rick Ketchum, current vice president and 

general manager says, “Whatever the challenge 

might be in a particular application, it is a safe 

bet we’ve seen and solved it in the past five-anda-half 

decades. If a new issue comes up, our 

customers know that no one can deliver 

solutions faster or more reliably.” 

Air-X-Changers has built its business upon 

a legacy of commitment to quality, performance, 

service, availability, and a solid promise that 

the company will stand by each and every unit 

it ships. 

AIR-X- 

CHANGERS 

❖ 

Below: Type E models, in the early 

days, 1962. 

Bottom: Type Z model, a modern-day 

product, 2008. 


WOOD MANOR 

NURSING 

CENTER 

Wood Manor Nursing Center is a Christianoriented 

long-term care and skilled nursing 

facility located at 2800 North Hickory Street 

in Claremore. When Wayne Wood purchased 

Wood Manor Nursing Center in July of 1976 

from Carrie Dickerson, the business was well 

known as Aunt Carrie’s. Carrie became a local 

celebrity as she used the money from the sale of 

Aunt Carrie’s to fight the Black Fox Nuclear 

Plant from being built in Inola, a town adjacent 

to Claremore. Wayne and his mother, Virginia 

Wood, directed Wood Manor Nursing Center 

until February of 1998 when Virginia retired 

and Wayne’s sister, Janice Shively, became the 

administrator. Wayne remains active in the 

business today. 

In 2004, land was purchased to rebuild the 

old nursing facility and construction of the new 

facility on Hickory Street was completed in June 

of 2006. 

Through its facilities, activities, and medical 

assistance options, Wood Manor strives to deliver 

choices for each individual resident so that they 

might be comfortable with their preferences 

being met. The needs of both the resident and 

family members are addressed by providing 

large, spacious semi-private or private rooms 

with large, wheelchair-accessible restrooms and 

in-room cable, television and Internet capability, 

as well as a large, elegant dining facility with 

attached patio and separate assisted dining area. 

Daily activities are offered at Wood Manor 

geared to resident preference. Salon services, 

many different therapies (physical, speech, and 

occupational), a prayer chapel and a degreed 

social service professional on-staff are ways 

Wood Manor strives to assist its residents in 

adapting to the new environment. 

Certified for both Medicare and Medicaid, 

Wood Manor Nursing Center works with the 

resident and family to ensure the best possible 

medical care is provided. The director of the 

facility is a registered nurse and registered nurses 

are available seven days a week, as well as licensed 

nursing care, which is available twenty-four hours 

a day. Wood Manor has a separate twenty-two 

bed, female unit for loved ones dealing with 

dementia, with a fenced outdoor area with a 

walking path. Residents garden in this area, as 

well as relax in the summertime. 


e-mail communication between all agents and 

service providers. Agents’ offices are equipped 

with telephones and high speed wireless and 

Internet lines. Customers are often involved in 

the search process in the media room, which 

OKLAHOMES 

REALTY, INC. 

Working together as a team is what five local 

Realtors had in mind back in November of 1989 

when they joined forces and founded First Team 

Realtors, now OklaHomes Realty. They shared 

the vision that the best agents in Rogers County 

could join together and create an outstanding 

group of professionals who could provide the 

public with uncompromising customer services. 

What happened exceeded everyone’s 

expectations, except the founding members. 

The company enjoyed immediate success and 

has continued its rapid ascension throughout 

the last two decades. OklaHomes has clearly 

dominated the Rogers County market, leading 

all other companies in closed sales since 1990. 

To provide the best possible customer service 

during its founding, OklaHomes Realty agents 

have relied on technology in managing their 

business. OklaHomes Realty has been the leader 

in Rogers County in computer technology 

including having all listings on the Internet and 

enables them to view listings and search for 

information pertinent to their buying decision. 

OklaHomes Realty, Inc., relocated to the fastgrowing 

Highway 66 business district after 

about sixteen years in business. Owner/Broker 

Allen Stout came full circle when OklaHomes 

Realty, Inc., moved into the same building 

he had worked in twenty-five years prior as a 

beginning sales associate with Claremore 

Realty. The building, located at 2104 South 

Highway 66, was newly remodeled and offered 

individual and team office space, conference 

rooms, handicap accessible restrooms, and 

an “Internet Café” where clients can view 

online listings. 

❖ 

Above, left: The original members of 

the company. Left to right, Allen 

Stout, Jody Grubbs, Nell Clark and 

C. D. Byers. 

Above, right: In 2005, OklaHomes 

Realty, Inc., relocated from its original 

home in the historic downtown 

business district to the Highway 66 

business district. 

Below: The current REALTORS 

affiliated with OklaHomes Realty. 


CLAREMORE 

REGIONAL 

HOSPITAL 

Every community needs a dependable 

hospital that is close to home, a hospital that 

cares for loved ones of all ages. Claremore 

Regional Hospital continues to expand its 

horizons with increased staff, physicians, and 

technological advances. Claremore Regional 

Hospital first opened in 1955 and operated as a 

city-owned facility for twenty-three years. 

In 1983, AMI purchased Claremore Regional 

Hospital and after five years, CRH was one of 

thirty-five hospitals that spun off to become part 

of the Epic Healthcare. In 1994, Health Trust 

purchased the hospital from Epic Healthcare 

and after only one year Claremore Regional 

Hospital was sold to Columbia/HCA. On May 

11, 1999, Claremore Regional Hospital became 

one of thirty-three hospitals to form Triad 

Hospitals, Inc. In July 2007, Community Health 

Systems, CHS, purchased Triad Hospitals, Inc., 

making it one of the largest healthcare systems 

in the United States. Claremore Regional 

Hospital is one of 122 hospitals in 29 states 

owned or leased by CHS. 

Claremore Regional Hospital is a multimillion 

dollar facility that is licensed for eighty-nine beds. 

The hospital serves a steady population growth 

within its primary service area (Claremore) and 

secondary service area (the remainder of Rogers 

County and Pryor). The PSA population is 42,700 

and anticipates an increase of 11.8 percent in the 

next five years. The SSA population is 37,711 and 

anticipates an increase of 7.9 percent over the next 

five years. The combined service area population 

is 80,411. With over 450 employees and 50 

physicians on staff, Claremore Regional Hospital is 

the third largest employer in Claremore. 

In August 2004, Claremore Regional Hospital 

opened an Outpatient Diagnostic and Surgical 

Center as part of the $15-million expansion 

project. A nine-thousand-square-foot facility, the 

Outpatient Diagnostic and Surgical Center is 

equipped with a SkyLight Nuclear Medicine 

Camera and GE Light Speed Multi-16 Slice CT 

Scanner, four endoscopy suites with five pre- and 

post-recover cubicles, as well as five pre-op surgical 

rooms, five PACU rooms, and five OR suites. 

In May 2006, Claremore Regional realized 

further growth with the opening of the spacious 

Claremore Regional Medical Plaza. The building 

has three floors with a total of 25,000 square feet. 

It houses the Family and Senior Health Center, 

Claremore Internal Medicine, Northeast Oklahoma 

Women’s Center, the Orthopaedic Center and the 

Northeast Oklahoma Cancer Center. 

Claremore Regional Hospital is a fully 

accredited, acute-care hospital that serves 

Claremore, as well as the entire Rogers County 

area. With the continuation of expansion for the 

facility, Claremore Regional Hospital strives to 

be the ultimate choice in healthcare. 


The arrival of Andrew J. Fraley and his wife, 

Clinton Skidmore Fraley from Greenville, Texas, 

to Chelsea, Oklahoma, in 1920 was the beginning 

of the Fraley family’s presence in Rogers County. 

The Fraleys had moved to Chelsea in order for 

Andrew to establish and operate a cotton gin. 

After completing that first gin, he built others 

throughout the area. After several letters to their 

oldest son, Clyde, who was working in a bank in 

Greenville, he and his wife, Lois, agreed to move 

to Chelsea and arrived in 1921. 

youngest son, George, started working in the 

agency during the summers when he was a 

junior in high school and continued each 

summer until he graduated from the University 

of Arkansas in 1963 to join the agency full time. 

In 1968, George married Wilma Robison, 

a Chelsea High graduate. In 1974 the couple 

purchased the insurance agency from Clyde. 

After the sale, Clyde continued working there 

every day until his death in 1978. 

FRALEY 

INSURANCE 

AGENCY, INC. 

The Chelsea Gin Company was formed with 

several investors. Andrew managed the five gins 

being operated in northeast Oklahoma. In 1925 

the gross receipts of the Chelsea Gin Company 

were $986,000. As the great depression 

approached, the cotton business began shrinking 

and times became hard. Clyde had previously 

cosigned contracts with insurance companies for 

a man to start an insurance agency in Chelsea. 

In 1933, he had the option of assuming 

the contracts—which he did—and, thus, Fraley 

Insurance Agency was established. As cotton 

gins were being closed, due to very little cotton 

being planted, Clyde was able to spend more 

time building the insurance business. 

During his time as an insurance agent, Clyde 

was also very involved in the community. 

He was a charter district director of the 

Rogers County Conservation District, which 

was formed in 1941. He joined the Chelsea 

Volunteer Fire Department in 1943 and served 

as fire chief until his retirement in 1971. 

Clyde and Lois had four children—Charles 

J., Marilyn L., Billy C., and George E. All four 

attended Chelsea schools and graduated from 

Chelsea High before attending college. The 

Like his father, George is very involved in the 

community. He joined the Chelsea Volunteer 

Fire Department in 1964, became chief in 1974, 

and retired from the department in 1994. In 

1975, after Clyde’s resignation from the Rogers 

County Conservation District Board, George 

was asked to fill that position. George still sits 

on the board. Clyde had served on the board for 

thirty-four years and George has now served 

thirty-four years. 

George and Wilma Fraley have three 

children—Paul E., Pamela M., and Matthew J. At 

various times throughout the years, Wilma and 

all three children have worked alongside George 

in the agency. Currently, Pamela and Matthew 

are employed there, continuing Fraley Insurance 

Agency’s rich history in Chelsea. In 2008 the 

agency celebrated seventy-five years of service to 

the residents of Chelsea, Rogers County and the 

state of Oklahoma. 

❖ 

Left: Clyde Fraley. 

Right: George and Wilma Fraley. 


SPONSORS 

A. M. Huffman Company .............................................................................................................................................................76 

Advance Research Chemicals, Inc. ................................................................................................................................................54 

Air-X-Changers.............................................................................................................................................................................85 

All American Fire Systems, Inc. ....................................................................................................................................................68 

AXH Air-Coolers ..........................................................................................................................................................................70 

Cherokee Nation TM Entertainment, LLC ........................................................................................................................................50 

City of Claremore.........................................................................................................................................................................83 

Claremore Indian Hospital ...........................................................................................................................................................56 

Claremore Motor Inn....................................................................................................................................................................75 

Claremore Regional Hospital ........................................................................................................................................................88 

Days Inn Claremore......................................................................................................................................................................80 

Edward Jones Investments............................................................................................................................................................74 

Fraley Insurance Agency, Inc. .......................................................................................................................................................89 

Froman Oil & Propane Co. ..........................................................................................................................................................64 

GEA Rainey Corporation ..............................................................................................................................................................66 

Healthy Smiles Family Dentistry and Green Country School of Dental Assisting...........................................................................82 

Inola, Oklahoma ..........................................................................................................................................................................52 

Inola Health Care Center..............................................................................................................................................................84 

John Williams Company, Inc. .......................................................................................................................................................79 

Lafarge .........................................................................................................................................................................................72 

Clem and Donna McSpadden Family............................................................................................................................................71 

Molly’s Landing ............................................................................................................................................................................73 

Musgrove-Merriott-Smith Funeral Home ......................................................................................................................................62 

OklaHomes Realty, Inc. ................................................................................................................................................................87 

Pacesetter Claims..........................................................................................................................................................................44 

Pelco Structural, LLC ...................................................................................................................................................................44 

The Frank W. Podpechan Family, Hickory Coal Corporation & Claremont Corporation ...............................................................46 

RCB Bank.....................................................................................................................................................................................81 

Rogers County Historical Society..................................................................................................................................................77 

Rogers County Industrial Development Authority.........................................................................................................................44 

Rogers State University.................................................................................................................................................................60 

S&S Steel Construction ................................................................................................................................................................45 

Shaw Law Firm ............................................................................................................................................................................78 

Shipman Veterinary Services, Inc..................................................................................................................................................45 

Steel Service Building Company ...................................................................................................................................................58 

Utility Cable Communications......................................................................................................................................................45 

Wood Manor Nursing Center .......................................................................................................................................................86 


ABOUT THE AUTHORS 

B OB 

B URKE 

Bob Burke has written more historical non-fiction books than anyone else in history. His 95 books are all about Oklahoma’s 

incredible heritage. Born in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, he was the director of a large state agency in Governor David Boren’s 

administration and managed Boren’s first campaign for the United States Senate. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and 

Oklahoma City University School of Law. Burke, a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of 

Fame, has earned numerous awards for his writings. He is the father of Robert, Amy, and Cody, stepfather of Natalie, Lauren, and 

Calli, and grandfather of Nathan, Jon, Ridge, and Fallon. He and his wife Chimene live in Oklahoma City where he practices law 

and writes books. 

E RIC 

D ABNEY 

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Eric Dabney, grew up in Kremlin, Oklahoma and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees 

from the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond where he now serves as an adjunct professor in the College of Education. He is 

the series editor for Commonwealth Publishing, a contributing writer for numerous publications including Historic Oklahoma, Historic 

Tulsa, and Historic Edmond, and is the co-author of Fearless Flight, Historic South Carolina, and Willie of the Valley: The Life of Bill Paul. 

Eric and his wife Shelley have three daughters, Emily, Claire, and Julia, and live near Guthrie, Oklahoma. 

About the Authors ✦ 91

For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call 

Historical Publishing Network at 800-749-9790 or visit www.lammertinc.com. 

Albemarle & Charlottesville: 

An Illustrated History of the First 150 Years 

Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas 

Garland: A Contemporary History 

Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History 

Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History 

Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History 

Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History 

Historic Austin: An Illustrated History 

Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History 

Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History 

Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Charlotte: 

An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County 

Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City 

Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History 

Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History 

Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History 

Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began 

Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Houston: An Illustrated History 

Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History 

Historic Kern County: 

An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County 

Historic Lafayette: 

An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish 

Historic Laredo: 

An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County 

Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County 

Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Midland: An Illustrated History 

Historic Montgomery County: 

An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas 

Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County 

Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History 

Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Omaha: 

An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County 

Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Osceola County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History 

Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History 

Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History 

Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History 

Historic Prescott: 

An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County 

Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History 

Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land 

Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Shreveport-Bossier: 

An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City 

Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History 

Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Temple: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texarkana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texas: An Illustrated History 

Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History 

Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wake County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Warren County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear: 


Historic York County: An Illustrated History 

Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego 

Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future 

Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community 

Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History 

Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle 

The New Frontier: 

A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County 

The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait 

The Spirit of Collin County 

Valley Places, Valley Faces 

Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County 


$29.95 

LEADERSHIP 

SPONSORS 

The Frank W. Podpechan Family 

Hickory Coal Corporation & 

Claremont Corporation 

ISBN: 9781935377115

Historic Rogers County

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