American West Program - Oklahoma's Crude Past
Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 07:00 PM

The final talk for the American West Program
Lecture Series, one of the most popular summer
events of its kind at CSU, begins at 7 p.m. in
Room 104 Yates Hall at Colorado State University.

Cost for the lecture is $5 per person.
Contact Jeff Pappas, coordinator of the American
West Program, at (307) 777-7828 for more details.

Sponsors include CSU’s Department of History and
the College of Liberal Arts.
 
- Preserving Heritage in the American West -

Oklahoma’s Crude Past: The Case for Preserving a
State’s Industrial Heritage
Tuesday, June 27
Presented by Brian Frehner, Department of History
Oklahoma State University

The petroleum industry stands out as a defining
feature in the history of Oklahoma as well as the
Southern Plains, effecting people’s lives,
institutions, and their relationships to the
natural world, but much of this history has gone
unrecorded. Large integrated companies as well as
individual businessmen in search of fortune
flocked to the region in the early twentieth-
century to find the black gold that promised to
fulfill their dreams. Rather than ignoring their
history or downplaying the oil industry’s
negative image, Oklahomans face an opportunity to
preserve and potentially profit from this
important historical legacy.