101 Ranch Oil Company

Founded in 1908 by oil exploration pioneer E. W. Marland, The 101 Ranch Oil Company was located on the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch and headquartered in Ponca City, Oklahoma. The company’s 1911 oil discovery in North Eastern Oklahoma opened up oil development in a great region from Eastern Oklahoma west to Mervine, Newkirk, Blackwell, Billings and Garber and led to the founding of the Marland Oil Company, later renamed the Continental Oil Company, now known as Conoco.

Ernest Whitworth Marland was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on May 8, 1874. Marland studied to be an attorney, receiving an LL.B. from the University of Michigan Law School at the age of nineteen in 1893. Marland moved back to Pittsburgh and set up private practice. As an attorney representing local coal and oil interests, Marland became interested in geology and by the age of 33, the young lawyer had become involved in a series of local coal and oil promotions which soon made him a small fortune.

Unfortunately for Marland, the millions he had amassed were lost following the panic of 1907. By 1908, Marland was broke and without a job.

Interested in reestablishing his oil ventures, Marland came to Ponca City upon the urging of a relative, Lt. Franklin Roosevelt Kenney, who introduced Marland to the Miller brothers - Joseph "Joe" Carson Miller, Zachary "Zack" Taylor Miller and George Lee Kockernut Miller, of the famous 101 Ranch near Ponca City.

He decided that the Ranch surface geology indicated that there was oil in the area. Geology was his divining rod, he said, a science yet to be proven in the hunt for crude. Marland returned to Pittsburgh and raised $500,000 for a new oil venture, naming it the 101 Ranch Oil Company with himself as President and taking into the company as directors, O. W. Ainslie, the chef at Pittsburgh's Boyer Hotel, J. G. McCaskey, a sauerkraut producer, Marland's relative, F. R. Kenney, a retired chair manufacturer, George Miller of the 101 Ranch, and Marland’s father-in-law, Samuel Collins who was also elected Treasurer.

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