Glenn Pool is where Oklahoma’s oil age truly began. On November 22, 1905, Robert Galbreath and Frank Chesley completed the Ida E. Glenn No. 1 south of Tulsa, finding light, sweet crude at 1,481 feet in what became known as the Glenn sand. Within two years the pool was producing more than half as much oil as the entire rest of the United States, and the money, companies, and refineries it attracted made Tulsa the "Oil Capital of the World." Cumulative production exceeds 340 million barrels — and the old sand still produces today.
The Ida E. Glenn No. 1 came in on November 22, 1905, on the farm of Ida and Robert Glenn in the Creek Nation, flowing 75 to 85 barrels a day of high-gravity, sweet crude — oil so good it commanded premium prices from the start. The discovery, made the year before Oklahoma statehood, set off a leasing and drilling rush across the allotted lands of the Creek Nation, and the field quickly proved far larger and richer than the shallow Kansas-style production the region had known.
Within two years Glenn Pool was producing more than 55,000 barrels a day — at a time when the rest of the country combined produced about 100,000 — and output at times reached 120,000 barrels daily. That flood of light crude overwhelmed local markets, pulled major pipelines north from the Gulf and east from the Atlantic seaboard, and financed the banks, office towers, and oil companies that turned the small railroad town of Tulsa into the industry’s acknowledged capital for half a century.
Like every flush sandstone field of its era, Glenn Pool declined from its early peaks, but it never died. Town-lot–style dense drilling gave way to settled stripper production, and waterflooding of the Bartlesville sand beginning in mid-century recovered oil the boom-era wells had left behind. Total cumulative production has passed 340 million barrels, and the community of Glenpool, named for the field, sits atop leases that have now paid royalties across three centuries’ worth of generations.
Glenn Pool produces from the Bartlesville sand — locally christened the "Glenn sand" — a Pennsylvanian sandstone of the Cherokee Platform lying at roughly 1,400 to 1,500 feet. The reservoir combines shallow depth, good porosity, and unusually high-quality light, sweet crude, a combination that made the field cheap to drill and its oil easy to sell. The trap is largely stratigraphic, with the sand’s thickness varying across the field — which is why waterflood performance, and remaining value, differs noticeably from lease to lease.
Glenn Pool’s second life came from water. After decades of primary depletion, operators unitized portions of the field and waterflooded the Bartlesville sand from the mid-twentieth century onward, reviving leases that boom-era drilling had drained inefficiently. Later operators added polymer-augmented and infill projects on some units. None of this made headlines like 1905 did, but it is why a field discovered before statehood still reports production today — and why royalty interests here have outlasted every reasonable expectation of their original owners.
Glenn Pool interests are heirloom assets in the most literal sense: many trace to allotment-era and early-statehood leases, and ownership today is often split into small fractions across large families. The field’s remaining production is modest but remarkably persistent, and value depends on which units are actively flooded versus idled stripper leases. We buy minerals and royalties in Tulsa and Creek counties directly, handle the often-tangled title work at our expense, and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Yes. Production is a small fraction of the boom-era flood, but stripper wells and waterflood units still produce from the Bartlesville sand more than a century after the 1905 discovery, and royalties are still paid on those leases.
It was Oklahoma’s first giant oil field. Discovered in 1905, it briefly out-produced most of the rest of the country, attracted the pipelines and companies that built Tulsa into the "Oil Capital of the World," and set the template for the Oklahoma booms that followed at Cushing and Healdton.
Small legacy fractions are often worth more than their monthly checks suggest, but less than owners sometimes hope — the honest answer depends on the specific units. Send us a check stub or legal description and we will give you a free written offer so you can decide with real numbers.