Ponca City is a city of around 24,000 in Kay County in north-central Oklahoma, about 100 miles north of Oklahoma City. It was built on oil — E.W. Marland, who founded what became Conoco Oil, made his fortune here in the 1910s and 20s and left behind a remarkable legacy in the form of the Marland Mansion, a 55-room Italian Renaissance estate modelled on the Villa Farnese, now a museum open to the public. His earlier and more modest home, the Marland Grand Home, is also open as a museum.
The city also has the Pioneer Woman Statue on Grand Avenue, a 17-foot bronze by sculptor Bryant Baker that was dedicated in 1930 as a tribute to the women who helped settle the Oklahoma Territory. Three smaller versions were exhibited across the US before Ponca City was chosen for the full-size monument. The adjacent Pioneer Woman Museum tells the story of women in Oklahoma history.
Other landmarks worth seeking out: the restored 1927 Poncan Theatre; the free Conoco Museum on the south side of downtown; the bronze Standing Bear Memorial honouring the Ponca chief whose 1879 court case established Native Americans as legal persons; and the ruined headquarters of the 101 Ranch fifteen miles south, the famous Wild West show ranch where Marland's first oil well was drilled.
It's a modest stop rather than a destination in itself, but the Marland Mansion alone is genuinely worth the detour for anyone interested in the wild extravagance of early 20th-century oil wealth.