Retreat to Woolaroc

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July 14, 2008

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Mon Jul 14, 2008, 02:53 PM CDT

By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. — It doesn’t take days of driving or hundreds of dollars to visit the Old West.

A taste of it can be found within 120 miles of Joplin in the Osage Hill country of north-central Oklahoma at Woolaroc, oilman Frank G. Phillips’ 3,700-acre ranch-turned-museum 12 miles south of Bartlesville.

Phillips was born in 1873 in Iowa, one of 10 children in a family of modest means. He started out in life as a barber but decided to press his luck in the Oklahoma oil fields after he saw opportunity there during a trip in 1904. The payoff was huge, making Phillips and his company, Phillips 66, the largest oil company in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century.

Phillips witnessed an era in technological development — from the horse-and-wagon days of frontier expansion to the modern mobility that automobiles and air travel brought. And as he lived through the changes, he saw the end looming for the romantic and beloved “Wild West,” the diversity that was the cowboy and Indian.

After he struck it rich on oil in the first decade of the 1900s, Phillips built a large home in Bartlesville. Eventually, he also established an office in New York, where the nation’s biggest oil baron was expected to transact business. He looked along the East Coast for a place to build a country home so that he could entertain the rich and famous of the day, according to Bob Fraser, Woolaroc’s chief executive officer.

On a visit back in Bartlesville, Phillips realized that his heart remained in the Osage hills and that area would make a rustic haven where he could entertain the adventurous and even transact a little business. “He always said that if he could get someone here, he could close the deal,” Fraser said of the fondness Phillips felt for the woods, lakes and rocky hills that would become the Phillips’ ranch.

“It worked wonders for him,” Fraser said of the Woolaroc ranch, built in 1925. “His guests were seeing things here they’d never seen before. He could introduce them to the chiefs, like Chief Bacon Rind, and show them buffalo, take them fishing and horseback riding.”

While he loved to hunt, he stocked the ranch with plenty of exotic animals solely for viewing entertainment. They included zebra and water buffalo. Descendants of those herds still thrive on the grounds with longhorn cattle and elk and many other animals.

Phillips died in 1950; his wife, Jane, had died two years earlier. There is a family tomb on the grounds of the ranch. In 1957, a museum to house the Phillips’ collection of Old West paintings, American Indian artifacts and cowboy art was erected. It houses examples of the work of artists such as Frederic Remington.

One of the mainstays of the Woolaroc collection shares a link to Joplin — numerous sculptures and paintings by Joplin native and Western artist Joe Beeler.

Museum visitor Donovon Lansford, 14, of Galena, Kan., said he was fascinated to learn there was so much American Indian heritage preserved. “I had no idea they went to all this work to save all this stuff,” he said of the paintings, clothing, tools, guns, basketry and other items displayed in the Woolaroc gallery. And, he said, he was unaware so many tribes existed. “I thought there was only two or three” until he saw the Woolaroc displays, he said.

Six-year-old Bobby Glenn recently emerged from the museum with a toy rifle, a memento of his latest trip to the museum he said he has visited a “lotta, lotta” times. His grandfather, Robert Glenn, who lives near Bartlesville, said he has brought the boy on numerous visits because they enjoy the cowboy-and-Indian experience the museum offers.

And, the boy says a herd of rams that roams one of the paddocks is his favorite attraction at the compound.

The museum draws about 100,000 visitors a year to fulfill the legacy Phillips desired to leave.

“He felt a very strong responsibility that people who had the benefits of success should leave something that would help people learn from the past. It was more than writing something snappy on a business card,” Fraser said. “He wanted to preserve the past, to educate and to entertain.”

Fraser likes to think that Woolaroc is achieving those three goals.

“I try to convey that we’re changing, we’re improving every day with more things for people to see and to do, and yet we’re still just like 1925,” Fraser said.

Visitors to Bartlesville also can visit the city home of Phillips at 1107 Cherokee Ave. as well.

Destination: Woolaroc, home of Frank Phillips of Phillips 66

Directions: Woolaroc is located on Oklahoma Highway 123, 12 miles south of Bartlesville. It can be reached several ways from the Joplin area: via the Will Rogers Turnpike to Vinita and then west on Oklahoma Highway 60 to Highway 123; or via Kansas Highway 166 west to Caney, Kan., then south on Oklahoma Highway 75 to Highway 60 and southwest on Highway 123.

Hours: Woolaroc is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday until Labor Day, when it closes Tuesdays. The Web site is at www.woolaroc.org.

Address: 319 S. Dewey Ave., Bartlesville, Okla.

Features: Exotic animals populate the grounds. The museum houses American Indian artifacts, Old West paintings and cowboy art.

Distance from Joplin: 102 miles.

Cost of roundtrip: Using a car that gets 30 miles per gallon and gasoline at $3.85 a gallon, the trip to Woolaroc in Bartlesville, Okla., costs $26.18. Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors, and free for kids 11 and younger.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Labor Day. Closed Tuesdays after Labor Day.

More info: www.woolaroc.org.