Bartlesville grew from frontier milling, trading, and farming into an incorporated town and then a major oil center through the efforts of figures including Nelson Carr, Jacob Bartles, William and Lillie Johnstone, George Keeler, H.V. Foster, the Phillips brothers, Osage Chief Bacon Rind, and others. Carr brought the first industry to Indian Territory with a water-powered corn gristmill on the Caney River in 1867, later sold to Bartles, who expanded it into flour production and built a store, home, saw mill, furniture shop, hotel, and farms north of the river in what became known as Bartles Town or Northside. In 1885, Johnstone and Keeler opened the first store on the south side of the Caney, helping spur the rapid growth of Southside, which reached a population of 200 in 1896 and incorporated as Bartlesville in 1897. That same year, Johnstone, Keeler, and Michael Cudahy brought in the first commercial oil well in Indian Territory, the Nellie Johnstone, beginning Oklahoma's oil industry and helping turn Bartlesville into a forest of derricks with more than 100 wells in the area by 1904. The city’s development continued through oil, transportation, and civic building projects, including H.V. Foster’s role in Osage oil leases through Indian Territory Illuminating Oil, the Interurban Railway that began service in 1908, the Washington County Courthouse built in 1913, the founding of Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917, the Masonic Lodge Building, Frank Phillips Tower, and the Phillips service station style that became a company icon. The period also featured George B. Keeler’s work as a trader and interpreter among Native peoples, Bacon Rind’s role in advancing the Osage Nation’s oil and gas resources, and the 1927 Dole race victory of the Woolaroc plane sponsored by Phillips.