Weston Wednesday: Zinc Co. played important role here
Editor's Note: In collaboration with the Bartlesville Area History Museum, the Examiner-Enterprise has revived the late Edgar Weston's 'Revisiting the Past' columns that ran in the newspaper from 1997-99. Weston's columns recount the history of Bartlesville as well as Washington, Nowata and Osage counties.
D.R. McKeithan's wife, Mariann Whitman, came to Bartlesville with her family in the spring of 1908 from Kansas by train. Mr. McKeithan moved to Bartlesville in 1924 to work for the Cities Service Oil Co., known as the Empire Co. in the early days.
Mrs. McKeithan's grandfather, Capt. Thomas Jones, was a metallurgist with the smelters. Jones attended school in England and moved to Rhode Island in 1871 to build a smelter. After that job, he moved to Pulaski, Virginia, to build more smelters. The family moved to Illinois for more smelters in 1898. Her father moved to Iola, Kansas to work in the smelters and then in 1907, moved to Bartlesville to accept a job as office manager with the Bartlesville Zinc Co.
A year later, in the spring of 1908, the family relocated. The Bartlesville Zinc Co. was a subsidiary of the American Metals Co., which was controlled by German interests. During World War I, the German interests were confiscated and the company became a wholly American operation.
Her father remained with the company until it was sold to National Zinc in 1926. He was retained to help in the salvaging of the old plant, which was completely dismantled about 1930. Her father died in 1957 at the age of 96.
In 1909, Archibald Jones, her uncle, moved from Caney, Kansas, to Bartlesville to become plant manager of Bartlesville Zinc. He remained as manager until shortly after the First World War when he moved to Pennsylvania to manage another smelter. Ted Jones, another uncle, came to Bartlesville in 1914 and became chief chemist. He worked just a few years and returned to Neodesha, Kansas. Mr. Kurt Stock served as manager of the Bartlesville plant until it was sold in 1926.
Bartlesville Zinc bought the Lanyon-Star plant in 1915 and increased the plant operation. Her father worked six days a week from 5 a.m. until late evening. At the peak of operation, there were more than 1,000 employees. The reason the smelter located in southeast Kansas and northeast Oklahoma was the availability of natural gas and the large deposits of lead and zinc in the tri-state area around Joplin, Missouri. In the early days, it was cheaper to move ore by rail than gas by pipeline. High pressure long distance pipelines had not been developed. The majority of the lead and zinc used by the U.S. came from the tri-state area until the 1920s.
Bartlesville Zinc was the first commercial producer of gallium, used in certain alloys. Gallium was discovered in 1912 by a Frenchman, but was not produced until accidentally as a byproduct in Bartlesville in 1913. When Hal C. Price graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1913, he was hired by Bartlesville Zinc as a chemist. He conceived the idea that electric welding of steel pipe joints would eliminate leakage on high-pressure gas and oil lines. He designed and developed the high-pressure pipeline. The H.C. Price pipeline company became famous for the high-pressure pipelines. The Price Tower, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was the office of the Price Pipeline Co.
Mr. A.D. Terrill was an early-day employee of the zinc company. When Mr. McKeithan first came to town 1924, Mr. Price was first laying the high-pressure pipeline west of Bartlesville. Part of his job was to inspect the work each day. Three zinc companies started in Bartlesville in 1907, Lanyon-Star, Bartlesville Zinc Co., and the National Zinc Co.
The last company in operation was the National Zinc Company. Most of the lead and zinc mines in the tri-state area have been depleted. Most of the ore brought into Bartlesville came from Canada and South America. There was no domestic ore processed in Bartlesville. The largest zinc smelter built was in Collinsville. The smelters in the east were fired by coal, and moved to the tri-state because gas was
cheaper and easier to use. In the early days, gas was a by-product of oil production. The first commercial oil well is in the city part in Bartlesville, the Nellie Johnstone.
When Mrs. McKeithan's family moved to Bartlesville in 1908, the only house available was a four-room house on Jennings Avenue. They lived there a short while and the Caney River flooded. The owners of the house had to move back into it because they had been flooded out. They moved to Wyandotte Street and her father built a house on Shawnee Street. She began school at Garfield School where the new Performing Arts Center is located.
Bartlesville was a boom town in those years. The streets were not paved and had board sidewalks. In a few years, they installed an interurban for the smelter workers to come to town. Electricity was brought to town in about 1910 and everyone had gas lights until that time. Most people kept the gas lights because they were afraid the electricity would go off.
People went swimming in the Caney River in the summertime, but the water had so much oil from the wells that a "skimmer" held the oil back. A bathhouse was built on the river and a canoe house was built. There was a natural dam on the river and that was the site of the grist mill built by Mr. Nelson Carr purchased by Jacob Bartles and converted to a flour mill. Bartles raised the natural rock dam in the Caney River about three feet to provide more water for the mill. This improved the swimming in the river.
George B. Keeler and William Johnstone, former employees of Jacob Bartles, constructed a store across the river on the southside. Mr. Bartles and Col. Porter of Caney, Kansas, constructed a railroad from Caney, Kansas, to Collins Coal Mine. The grade was about completed when Bartles and Porter ran out of money. The Santa Fe Railroad purchased the grade from Bartles and Porter and completed the railroad.
George B. Keeler influenced the Santa Fe to locate the depot on the southside. Bartles was upset and decided to move to Dewey. In 1899, the Bartles store was moved to Dewey and the Dewey Hotel construction began.
This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Weston Wednesday: Zinc Co. played important role here
