The Magnolia Petroleum Company, founded as an unincorporated joint-stock association on April 24, 1911, was a consolidation of several earlier companies, the first of which, the J. S. Cullinan Company, began operating a refinery at Corsicana, Texas, on December 25, 1898. The Corsicana Petroleum Company, planned as a crude-oil producer for the Cullinan plant, was organized in 1899. The George A. Burts Refining Company, organized in 1901 to absorb much of the crude oil from the Spindletop oilfield, became the Security Oil Company. In 1909 both the Navarro Refining Company, successor to the Cullinan Company, and the Security Oil Company were purchased by the John Sealy Company, which in 1911 became the Magnolia Petroleum Company, with Sealy as president.

The Magnolia Petroleum Company merged with Socony Mobil Oil Company on September 30, 1959. Its operations became part of Mobil Oil Company, which had been formed in March 1959 as an operating division of Socony Mobil, responsible for all operations except marine transportation in the United States and Canada.[i]

Calumet Junction Magnolia Filling Station, U.S. Highway 270 and Highway 66, north of Exit 115 on Interstate 40

Richardson Building, W. Division Street and Kate Boevers, Union City, OK

The Bank of Union began in 1900 with $10,000 in borrowed capital on the first floor of a two-story, wood-frame building in Union City of Oklahoma Territory, seven years before Oklahoma became a state. In 1910, this brick bank building was built across the street from the Union City school and the bank shared that corner with the school for sixty-seven years. In 1977, The Bank of Union constructed a new building and moved four blocks east to its present location at 206 North Main Street.[i]

After visiting the Marshall Field Department Store in Chicago Illinois, J.L. Hand was inspired to return to his hometown and build the beautiful Hand Trading Company. The structure was finished in 1916.  This  four-story historical building, once called the “Big Store” carrying a variety of goods for sale, has now been adapted for new uses.

U.S. Highway 67 follows the route of the Bankhead Highway through southwestern Arkansas.  The Bankhead started at Washington D.C. and crossed the continent through the southern states, ending at San Diego and passing through some of the South’s largest cities, including Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Dallas, Ft. Worth, and El Paso.

As a New Deal organization the National Youth Administration (NYA) was established within the Works Progress Administration (WPA) on June 26^th, 1935, and funded by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. NYA provided work training based on U.S. citizenship and financial need for youth between ages sixteen and twenty-five. In addition to offering courses in writing, reading, and arithmetic, NYA operated two programs: the Works Project Program to train unemployed, out-of-school youth, and the Student Aid Program to provide work-study training for high school, college, and graduate students.

Hundreds of NYA projects evolved according to the facilities, funds, materials, and manpower particular to each state, county, or community. Major projects included construction, public and semiprofessional service, and home economics. The projects gave rise to learning skills in road and building construction, woodworking, office work, nursing, furniture and auto repair, radio operation, landscaping, blacksmithing, welding, agriculture, and domestic science. The national WPA regulated work hours at eight hours a day, forty hours a week, and seventy hours a month. Earnings ranged from ten to twenty-five dollars per month, which often went to the worker’s family. NYA offered self-improvement, health benefits, citizenship courses, and vocational guidance. It also provided social opportunities through community youth centers featuring athletics, hobby clubs, dramatics, games, music, and dancing.

By 1938 camps converted to youth resident centers for participants who needed housing, particularly those from rural areas who could not travel. They lived in dormitories and trained for six to eight months. NYA utilized school campuses, but most centers’ facilities were built, maintained, and furnished by trainees. Residents received a thirty-dollar monthly stipend with twenty dollars deducted to cover room and board.

During its eight years of existence NYA trained more than two million nationally under the Student Aid Program and employed another 2.6 million youth through its Works Projects Program.[i]

Old Douglass High School, 600 N. High Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK (photo from Bing Maps Birds Eye accessed 1/21/2012)

The first African American school in OKC was founded in 1891, and would later become Douglass High (named for the famous ex-slave author and abolitionist). It has had a somewhat troubled and nomadic existence. The first location of the school suspiciously burned down, and the second location was grossly inadequate and in an unsafe, industrial neighborhood. Due to legal battles regarding city, county, and even Federal ownership of properties, it took three years to move Douglass High students into a new building.  In 1934, the old “Lowell School”, a previously all-white school originally built in 1910, was expanded and became the third location of Douglass High School. With a swimming pool, auditorium, stage, and proximity to students’ neighborhood, this was a great step forward for the school’s student body.

Douglass High School was home to pillars of the Oklahoma City African American community.  Examples include Zelia Breaux, the first woman ever appointed President of the Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers, and daughter of the first President of Langston University, Inman Page; and Ralph Ellison, author of the national bestseller “Invisible Man” and one-time Vice President of ONG.

As the only African American school in OKC, Douglass High School quickly became overcrowded. A new high school was constructed in 1954, and Douglass High School became the Page-Woodson 5th Grade Center. Page-Woodson was then closed permanently in 1994 when 5th Grade Centers across the city were converted to elementary schools through a federal grant.  The former Douglass High School was the only school not converted, but simply closed, and has been vacant since 1994.

For a short period of time around 2004, the non-profit organization Oklahoma City Northeast Incorporated had plans to renovate the building to be utilized for a community cultural or development center. Unfortunately, these plans fell through, and again the building sits abandoned, dangerously close to being lost, either to its own deterioration or to make way for new development.[i]

Andrew Goodholm House, 10735 NE 23rd Street, Oklahoma City, OK (Satellite image accessed from Google Maps 1/21/2012)

Construction was started in 1899 by Andrew Goodholm, one of the first millers in Oklahoma City. He was also a city councilman, builder, developer, lumber dealer and an officer of the first packing plant. Goodholm was organizer of the Acme Milling Company, an early flour mill, and headed a company that built the original Sears Roebuck & Company store which has been demolished by urban renewal. As a director of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, Goodholm had a hand in early development of several industries in the city and state. He served two terms on the City Council.

Goodholm’s house later was acquired by another builder, the late Manzy Leon Jones, whose general construction company erected a number of residences and commercial buildings in Oklahoma City. Jones and his wife, Gracelyne, owned the house from 1955 until it was sold in 1977 to Fentriss Sound Company.

James Fentriss was eager to have the house preserved and offered it to any group which agreed to move and restore it to its original splendor.  In the event there were no takers, the building was to be razed to make room for commercial development. Sandy Saunders, State Fair President, proposed moving the house to the Fairgrounds for preservation and to illustrate an example of life in the Capitol City at the turn of the century. Other uses for the house included a museum, teaching tool for children in history, and the creation of a preservation laboratory in conjunction with the Preservation Office of the Oklahoma Historical Society. The house was moved from the State Fair Park in 2008 to this location in Nicoma Park.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form

National Register of Historic Places, picture taken in 1982 when located at State Fair Park