Volume 10 , Issue 28

Why Perry Over Ponca City, OK

"Why it's better to live in Perry than Ponca City? Ponca City is one of the "Superfund" cities that folks are being forced to move out of, by the federal government!

Many years ago (before most of us were born), a man by the name of Ernest Whitworth Marland, came to Oklahoma and discovered oil. He wanted to build a refinery in Perry and the city fathers said, "We don't want that stinking stuff (factory) here!"

They refused him a permit to build here so he built it in Ponca City instead. The taxes he paid there made Ponca City rich. Then he went out west to Orem, Utah and bought another oil company called the Continental Oil Company and moved its headquarters to Ponca City to merge with Marland Oil.

He renamed the brand of gasoline and other petroleum products his company was manufacturing, "CONOCO" and his refinery grew larger. His Marland Oil company had been using a triangle in their advertising and had even built triangular shaped small buildings to house the offices of their "filling stations" in many of the towns where they were selling their gasoline.

One of those triangular shaped buildings was built in Perry at the corner of 7th and "C" street (now known as Cedar street) on U.S. Highway 77 (one of the two border to border, Canada to Mexico), highways. That station's building is one of the three that is still standing and being used, today.

Mr. Marland retained the triangle in his advertising but stopped using all other references to his Marland Oil Company in order to further promote the name of "CONOCO."

The refinery was known to dump huge waste by-products into the local sewage disposal, and bury them in 'waste pits'.

Fast forward now to a few years ago when government scientists and inspectors discovered that these by-products were the cause of many illnesses (including cancer) among the population of Ponca City, and began offering folks the option of selling their houses and other properties in order to 'clean up' the area. Many folks just didn't want to leave a place where they'd raised their families so then the wise folks of the government condemned the properties and ordered them off the land, so that the 'Superfund folks' could begin to 'clean up' the city. And that's one of the reasons that Ponca City is not a good place to live." -- Roy
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