One of America's most colorful oilmen was Ernest Whitworth Marland, a man who had much in common with other industrial giants of his age-- the Mellons, Rockefellers, the Morgans.Moving to Ponca City, Oklahoma, from Pennsylvania shortly after the turn of the century, Marland quickly found oil on the lands of the Ponca and the Osage Indians.

E.W. Marland was a man of paradox--an advocate of unhampered oil exploration but also a champion of oil conservation, a man who lived in luxury but espoused the common causes of his idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt.