Washington County, OK
Dewey
Population: 3,179 in 2000; 3,326 in 1990
Dewey was founded on April 19, 1899 by Jacob Bartles. His trading post north of the Caney River in Bartlesville was bypassed by the Santa Fe railroad. Bartles knew there would need to be a stop a few miles onward, so he put his large store on log rollers and over five months moved it overland along the railroad right-of-way. He kept his store open while it was moved until it arrived at the site where the Tom Mix Museum now stands. He founded a new town there which he named after Admiral George Dewey. Across the street Bartles built the Dewey Hotel, which is still a tourist attraction. The Bartles store remained in operation until it burned in 1950.
Pictured at left is the first Dewey school, built in 1900 with sandrock hauled from the Osage Hills. The building was torn down in 1908.
1908 also brought the death of Jacob Bartles, but not before his son Joe had hosted the first Dewey Round-Up rodeo.
Held behind the Dewey Hotel for the Bartles annual reunion, the event became a Fourth of July tradition and eventually included not only rodeo events but also boxing and auto racing.
The rodeo, with pay outs from Joe Bartles always made in gold and total prize money reaching as high as $2,000, would eventually grow to become one of the three largest in the world. The state legislature created county free fairs in 1915, and Joe and his mother Nannie donated 40 acres for the Washington County Fairgrounds. That is still the site of the Washington County Free Fair. A 7,000-seat grandstand was built along with a one-half mile racetrack and several exhibit buildings. During World War I, all but one of the Round Ups were held to raise money for the Bartlesville and Dewey chapters of the Red Cross.
Oklahoma's first commercially built airplane was built in Dewey, making its maiden flight on Christmas Day, 1917, with Billy Parker at the controls. The "Dewey" made its first public flight on New Year's Day, 1918, with Joe Bartles as the first passenger. As the country entered World War I, Joe Bartles went to Washington, DC to offer land north of Dewey for an airplane factory and flying school. The flight instructors were William Cook and Billy Parker, and the factory closed at the end of the war after building ten planes. Parker's school closed in 1912 and he began barnstorming across the midwest. He joined Phillips Petroleum in 1926 and later headed their aviation division.
Outlaw Henry Starr's grave is in the Dewey Cemetery, marked by a blank headstone.
Dewey also owes much to the Tyler family. Frank and Herbert Tyler moved there in 1906. They incorporated the Dewey Portland Cement Company in 1906 with a $1,000,000 in capital and this plant produced the first cement in the state when it began operating in 1908. The plant was the first ever to use concrete silos for the storage of cement. The company was also a large supplier of crushed stone. Tom Mix, the famous movie cowboy, was working at the cement plant when he was "discovered" by a film crew in the area.
In 1927, Herbert Tyler went to Davenport, Iowa to start another plant and his son, Don (pictured), became plant manager. Don became known as a financier, oil producer, and cattle breeder. When the plant was in danger of a shutdown in 1939, employees successfully petitioned for Bartlesville's new College High School to be built of concrete. Before his retirement in 1953, Don Tyler gave the city its library, a park, and the agricultural building at the county fairgrounds. The library Don Tyler provided has two of Jacob Bartles' mill burrs set in its wall. The American-Marietta Company (later Martin-Marietta) bought the stock of the Portland Cement Company in the 1960s and the new owners built a plant in Tulsa. Soon afterwards, the Dewey plant's production declined and it went through a cycle of closings and reopenings until finally closing after more than 60 years of operation. Oilfield Pipe and Supply Company acquired the Dewey Portland site in 1983, while today east of the plant Bellco Materials operates a quarry along a limestone draw.
In late 2004 Oilfield Pipe and Supply Company cleared the Dewey Portland site for steel inventory. Below are photos of the smokestacks demolition on December 10, 2004 taken by Becky Burch and Michael Howze, as published in the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.
