The Early Years
It all began in the aftermath of World War I - a turbulent time in America. The grim news from Europe had given way to the excitement and glamour of the Flapper Era. Jazz was king in Harlem. Thrill-a-minute air shows were helping the aviation industry get off the ground. And Henry Ford was finally making cars in colors other than black.
"Everything for which America has fought has been accomplished," President Woodrow Wilson wrote just after the Armistice Agreement was signed. "It will now be our fortunate duty to assist by example, sober, friendly counsel, and by material aid, in the establishment of just democracy throughout the world."
It was true: the Great War could not have been won by England and France without the help of the United States. American industry, which was already more productive than anyone in Europe could imagine, poured arms and material across the Atlantic. But it was America's supply of oil that truly turned the tide.

The Era Of Oil

World War I taught the world a crucial lesson: oil would fuel the engines of success in the 20th century. And nations that could control the world's oil supplies could control their own destinies.
Nothing was of greater strategic importance in the Great War. Battle was truly mechanized for the first time, and aviation had become a deciding factor. While America had supplied the Allies, the only supplies of petroleum open to the Germans were in Romania and Russia. After the German attempt to control Baku failed in August of 1918, it was only a matter of time before Germany ran out of oil. On November 11, 1918, when the Armistice Agreement was signed, the German High Command had only a one-month supply left.  
In Oklahoma and Texas, the end of the war led to rowdy boom times. The vast reserves near Tulsa in the Red Fork and Glenn Pool areas fueled the rapidly growing auto fleets in the rest of the country. Suddenly, the race was on to find new oil and tap into the wealth that was flowing from the ground in a seemingly inexhaustible stream.
Glenn Pool was just one example. By the mid-Twenties the original 80 acres leased from a farmer named Glenn in 1905 had grown to a field of 8,000 acres — with more than 1,100 wells and nearly 100 companies operating there.
Within a few years, the frontiers of the lower 48 states were transformed, as the Wild West was reclaimed by wildcatters hell-bent on finding black gold.
Out on the wind-swept plains of north Texas, in a town called South Bend, a former barnstormer and a biologist agreed to formalize their partnership –– and the Helmerich & Payne Company was born.
It was not a marriage made in heaven, and oil was neither man's first love..