Waite Phillips Station

Before Waite Phillips became associated with Frank and L. E. in Phillips Petroleum Company, he had set up two of his own, the Waite Phillips Company in 1922, and the Independent Oil and Gas Company, which he later sold and which merged with Phillips in 1930. Over two decades he made a fortune in oil in Oklahoma, and his success displeased older brother Frank. After the merger, having twice demonstrated his ability to succeed in the oil business, Waite Phillips devoted an increasing amount of time to real estate and charities. His long-time dream was to become a rancher, and in the 1920s he bought more than three hundred thousand acres near Cimarron, New Mexico. He was determined to build one of the best cattle ranches in the state. In 1938 Waite founded the Southwestern Art Association as a corporate organization to receive as a gift the Villa Philbrook, his Tulsa estate, which became the Philbrook Museum of Art. An incorporated community in eastern Osage County, Barnsdall is situated on State Highway 11, seventeen miles southeast of the Osage County seat of Pawhuska and forty miles north of Tulsa. Originally named Bigheart for Osage Chief James Bigheart, the community was officially renamed in honor of Theodore N. Barnsdall and his Barnsdall Oil Company on January 1, 1922. The Barnsdall Oil Company discovered the nearby Barnsdall or Bigheart Oil Field in 1916 and purchased the local Bigheart Producing and Refining Company in 1921. Joshua S. Cosden built the Southwestern Refining Company at Bigheart circa 1910. He sold the facility in 1917, four years before its acquisition by the Barnsdall Refining Company, which was renamed the Bareco Oil Company in 1940. Bareco stopped refining in 1946 and began manufacturing microcrystalline waxes. Bareco was redesignated the Bareco Wax Company in 1952 and was subsequently purchased by the Petrolite Corporation. The plant became the world's largest manufacturer of microcrystalline waxes and remained operational into the twenty-first century. To visit the Waite Phillips-Barnsdall Filling Station Museum, contact the Sapulpa Historical Museum (main museum) and set up a tour of the Filling Station Museum.