In 1905 ...

How We Got Started in Oil & Gas...

Johnson Marcum was founded when a Johnson boy named John and Marcum girl named Ida found each other in the oil fields of Muskogee County in Indian Territory in 1905.  The young couple soon moved to Northeast Coal County and started a hardware store in the small town of Cairo, I.T. selling lumber, drill pipe, rope and dynamite to scores of fortune seeking roughnecks and wildcatters - one by the name of Harry Sinclair.

By 1915, with five kids and one on the way, the Johnson Marcum family was fully engaged in the oil and gas business in Coal, Stephens, Carter, Murray, Grady and Garvin Counties in the brand new state. Ida's first cousin, Henry Marcum, started his own oil and gas company in Ada in 1917 and called it Patsy Oil. Henry drilled and operated hundreds of wells in South Central Oklahoma from the 1920s to the 60s. Eventually Henry's sons expanded to Midland, Texas in the 1970s during the oil crisis and founded Marcum Drilling during the oil boom.   

Five generations later, the Johnson Marcum family is still serving the oil & gas industry in Oklahoma. Johnson Marcum is excited and looking forward to the next 100 years.