The Eastern Oklahoma Railway ran in 1903 and Burbank was reportedly named for a cocklebur-covered area along nearby Salt Creek. Anthony "Gabe" Carlton, a mixed-blood Osage and a Chouteau family descendant owned the townsite. Burbanks post office opened inside the store of Ira McCorkle, the town's first postmaster, in December 1907.
This house sets high on the street, looking out across the city’s spill, as below it, the main street breaks right then left, it’s pavement almost as old as the paint on the wood of the house. It spends every hour peering down on the ghosts of the walkabouts and work-abouts that used to be about this town, and followed Marland’s step forward of May 14th, 1920 and flooded this little Oklahoma town with oil and with people.
In 1923 Philips Petroleum and Sinclair Oil and Gas both set up shop just north of town, and over three thousand souls moved in to this little bitty place, with its one bank, it’s stores and it’s saloons.
There were people to run the oil refineries, to harvest the thirty-one million barrels of oil in 1923, some making eighteen dollars a day. Among that number of the good folk of town, were bootleggers, gamblers, prostitutes, and not the least of these, were other undesirables. Violence was commonplace, and as often as could be, it was relied upon by the instantly rich inhabitants, all being weighed and measured by souls who made residence there.
Live music played from each direction, as one place competed with another for the love of money.
Over time, this town actually lasted a few years, with deaths and robberies and people acting the fools, and those who were there who knew how to take advantage of them, until the oil played out, and in 1930, there was about ten percent of the populace there, a little more than 300.. The buildings had begun to wither, the bank it stood til 1940, thirty three years after its birth, until it was closed, the building like a death nell still stands, but is locked and mostly faded away.
Yesterday, this house still remained, looking over the town. It had been a place of refuge for those who had needed it, and a sign to others; that whitewash and covered patio, those fresh flowers posted throughout the dining room, and fine carpets from outside this country, would still hold the few that would venture there. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, purchaser of the Eastern Oklahoma Railway in 1907 closed the route in 1970.
153 people live here now, and the majority would say Burbank is almost gone.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Burbank, Oklahoma
In Osage County
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