Bios.Tulsa,OK HUTCHISON, Lon Lewis
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Posted by Lee Ann Collins on Thu, 29 Oct 1998
Surname: HUTCHISON, PENNINGTON, SLICK, SMITH
LON LEWIS HUTCHISON
Vol. 3, p. 1326-1327
Book has photo 
Lon Lewis Hutchison, author, scientist, educator and oil producer, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has let a career remarkable for accomplishment. He was born in Marion County, Kansas, July 26, 1876, and is the second of four children of Humphrey L. and Annie D. (SMITH) Hutchison, both of whom are still living. 
The former was born in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1849, and the latter in Saline County, Missouri, in 1856. 
Humphrey L. Hutchison went from Kentucky to Sumner County, Kansas, in 1872, where he turned the first furrow ever plowed in the county, but as buffalo hunting was his chief occupation, his career was rather nomadic for several years, but after the buffalo became scarce he settled in Marion County of the same state. During his hunting career the settler upon the land now in the heart of Wichita, Kansas, offered to trade his land for Mr. Hutchison's 45-caliber colt, but as land was plentiful and six-shooters were scarce the trade was not made. 
In 1882, Mr. Hutchison, with his wife and two eldest children, moved to Meade County, Kansas, where he lived until 1892, and engaged in stock raising and the dairy business. In September of the latter year he, with his family, moved to Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, where they resided until the opening of the Cherokee Strip, in 1893, when he made the "run" for a home and staked a "claim" upon the southwest quarter of section 1, township 21 north, range 1 west, about three miles northwest of the Government townsite of Perry, the seat of "Q" County, Oklahoma. There he proved up his claim and in 1909 removed to Enid, Oklahoma, which city was his home until the fall of 1913. In that year he moved to Tulsa, where he has continued successfully engaged in dairy farming. 
In politics, Mr. Hutchison is a democrat. He has served on the school and township boards in the various communities in which he has resided, and his public service has always been of an able and conscientious character. He is one of the active workers of the Christian Church, and for many years served as an elder therein. 
From the age of six until eleven years, Lon Lewis Hutchison spent a large part of his time in the saddle, doing the work of a full-fledged cow-puncher, and in the meantime kept up his studies under parental tutelage, so that upon entering school during his thirteenth year he ranked even higher in the grades than others of his age who had attended school continuously. When nineteen years of age, with a total schooling of twenty-three months, Mr. Hutchison began teaching in the public schools of Noble. His first school was taught in the 4-D district, near the site of the famous 4-D ranch of territorial days. The next year he was principal of the Osage City school, while Osage City was located northeast of Blackburn near the mouth of the Blackbear Creek in Pawnee County. The next year he was transferred to Cleveland, Oklahoma, where he remained for two years, attending Oklahoma University during the summer of 1899. During the early part of 1900 he was deputy superintendent of schools of Pawnee County, but realizing, as he puts it, "that if he kept teaching he would grow up in ignorance," he entered Oklahoma University as a preparatory student in the fall of 1901, and was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the spring of 1907. Majoring in geology, he submitted as his major thesis a treatise on the Stratigraphy of Oklahoma North of the Parallel of Thirty-five Degrees and Thirty Minutes, which is up to the present time the most complete treatise extant upon the geology of the region. 
In October following his graduation Mr. Hutchison was married to Miss Jessie PENNINGTON, who was born in Hill County, Texas. To this union there have been born four children, namely: Annie Josephine and Jessie Margaret, who died in infancy; Gregory Lewis and Mary Genevieve. 
In April preceding his graduation at Oklahoma, Mr. Hutchison was elected "Fellow" by the faculty of Yale University and appointed assistant in the department of geology for the year of 1907-08, so that his "honeymoon" consisted of a year's work in that great school, which conferred the degree of Master of Science upon him in the spring of 1908, he having learned the same in the record time of twenty weeks' resident work. His graduating thesis was a comprehensive treatise upon The Origin, Occurrence and Accumulation of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Just before receiving his master's degree he was elected instructor at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and assistant director of the State Geological Survey. 
This latter position he resigned to return to Oklahoma where, upon July 26, 1908, he was appointed chief of the Eastern Division of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, and a month later elected assistant director of that bureau and given charge of the coal, oil, gas, asphalt, lead, zinc and gypsum investigations of the state. 
His first public report on the mineral resources of Oklahoma was Bulletin No. 1, in collaboration with other members of the staff, and he is the author of Bulletin No. 2, being a Preliminary Report Upon the Asphalt, Asphaltite, Petroleum and Natural Gas of Oklahoma. He was nearing the completion of Bulletin No. 4, the Coal Fields of Oklahoma, when he left the survey in November, 1910. 
Upon leaving the state's employ he was located at McAlester for a short time surveying coal lands for a private corporation, but in March, 1911, came to Tulsa and took charge of the science department of the City High School, which position he occupied until June, 1912, when he closed his pedagogical career and hung out a sign as oil and gas geologist, the first to enter this field of endeavor west of the Mississippi River. Practice grew rapidly and was most satisfactory and remunerative--enough so that in July, 1913, Mr. Hutchison took down his professional shingle and entered the field as an independent operator upon his own capital, under the corporate name of Kanola Oil Company. When things became quiet in the oil fields during 1915 he went to Joplin, Missouri, and bought one of the largest zinc mines in the field and is now known there as one of the large individual producers of the district. 
Mr. Hutchison's motto has always been, "If a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well," and as result of its practical application has received many signal honors. One of which he is the proudest is the fact that when the Holland office of the Oklahoma State Oil Company had, in 1914, optioned large properties in South America, he was appointed, unknown to him and unsolicited, to pass upon the advisability of making the purchase involving millions of dollars. The following summer he was sent upon a similar mission to California and subsequently proffered permanent employment which would give him work in the oil fields of the world. 
On January 21 and 22, 1912, Mr. Hutchison made a hurried geological survey of the two south tiers of sections in township 18 north, range 7 east, for Thomas B. SLICK. His report upon this was as follows: "So far as I can determine from present investigation, it seems to me that the region from your first location (North center Section 28) southward to the township line, should all be good territory (for oil and gas) and may probably have a width equal to or even greater than the distance between your two new locations (West side Section 32 and center west half of Section 24)." His judgment proved correct. The location in the west part of section 32 was the discovery well of the now world famous Cushing field. 
Mr. Hutchison is a member of the Christian Church and has been a liberal contributor to its work. Politically he is a democrat and has always taken a good citizen's part in public affairs, though he could never be rated as a politician. He is ever ready with encouragement and material assistance in all movements, not only for the betterment of home, but for mankind in general. 
Lee Ann Collins, October 27, 1998