Glenn Pool Oil Reserve

The Glenn Pool was the first major oil field in Indian Territory, brought in by the Ida Glenn No. 1 well on land leased from a Creek freedwoman in November 1905. At its 1907 peak it was the largest producing field in the United States. The town that grew up around the strike — Glenpool, about 10 miles east of Sapulpa — is now a small Tulsa-area suburb but still produces oil from infill wells in the original reservoir.

The Glenpool Historical Society Museum on East Highway 117 covers the strike, the boom-era town, and the early Oklahoma oil industry. There is no public-access marker at the original well site, which is now a fenced infill well, but the museum has photos and the precise location.

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A story
On 22 November 1905, drillers Robert Galbreath and Frank Chesley brought in the first big gusher on land leased from Ida Glenn, a Creek freedwoman, near what is now the town of Glenpool. The strike produced 117,000 barrels a day at its peak — more than the entire output of Pennsylvania — and transformed Tulsa from a dusty railroad stop into the Oil Capital of the World inside a decade.

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