Oil Barons and Indian Chiefs

Ponca City is all about oil and the smell immediately hit us when we got out of the car at the Conoco Museum (see pic), our first stop in town. One of the main characters involved in the oil industry was E.W. Marland, an oil baron, who founded Conoco. The museum tells all about the history, the advertising, the oil production and many other aspects of the company. Very interesting!


The gorgeous Marland Estate, built in the 1920ies and called "Palace on the Prairie" (see pic), which we visited later, bears witness of the wealth and taste of the owner. Marland founded Marland Oil Company which became Conoco by fusion in 1929 and later merged with Frank Phillips oil imperium. Marland lived in this fine "castle", which was revolutionary modern at the time, splendid and overwhelming in every regard.

Today the Ponca City Refinery is predominant, also, in the Standing Bear Memorial Park, which we visited this morning, after a delicious filling breakfast with Austin from the local CVB in the somehow "nostalgic" Happy Days Café in downtown Ponca City.

Though the refinery forms the background for the Standing Bear Sculpture, a memorial to famous Indian Chief Standing Bear (1834?-1908), it's an impressive place. Best time to visit here is the Standing Bear Powwow, a very "authentic" open-air powwow in September (we did it a couple of years ago), but also the Museum & Cultural Center (pic) is worth a visit. It recalls the history of the tribes in the area - Ponca, Osage, Otoe, Kanza, Pawnee und Tonkawa - and shows changing exhibitions in an architecturally interesting building.

The Lester & Mary Cann Memorial Botanical Gardens (pic) and Lake Ponca were other interesting stops on our itinerary and we had a great dinner in a plain BBQ restaurant, Danny BBQ Head Quarters, where they sell different BBQ meats by the pound - like beef brisket, short ribs or sausage - with different sides to choose from (beans, potato salad, cole slaw...). Fortunately, Danny's was not far away from our hotel and after dinner we drove back to catch up with emails and proof-reading and "regular" office work. It's been a hot day, temperatures reached record heights of 90+ deg. F. (over 30 deg. C.) and there was a storm warning in operation.