The grand daddy of them all. Next to the 2N3055, this is perhaps the most famous transistor in the world. It is a good thing they got a little smaller!
Wellston, Oklahoma. This is a postcard of the "Pioneer Tourist Camp, On Highway 66, Near Wellston, Central Okla." It appears to have a star on the gas pumps so this must be a Texaco station, making it about 1933.
Historically, Wellston is on the land that was ceded to the Kickapoo Tribe as a Reservation (The Kickapoo were originally from Illinois). However, the government later changed its mind and made the individual tribe members receive a plot of land and then had the tribe sell the surplus land back to the federal government. This created over 900,000 acres of surplus land which were "opened" to settlement through the method of "Land Runs". The run in Wellston took place in 1895.
A "Land Rush" or "Land Run" was a system by which those interested in staking a claim for a plot of land set off from a starting point and rode as fast as they could toward the land being "opened" to settlement. Once they reached it, they claimed their homestead on a "first come, first served basis". There were several "runs" in the early 1890s in Oklahoma.
Thomas Craddock claimed the land near Well's trading post and deeded land for a town that was laid out next to where Captain Creek joined Deep Fork River. A road soon linked it to Chandler and Oklahoma City, and in 1898 the Arkansas and Oklahoma Railroad, (later the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway or "Frisco") reached the town and built a station there.
Cotton farming was the main activity. During the early 1900s, the county successfully lobbied to have the "Ozark Trail" pass through it, and by 1918, the dirt-surfaced trail passed through the town. It later became Oklahoma State Highway No. 7 and as such was incorporated into the alignment of Route 66 when it was created in 1926, which passed right through the town for the next six years.
This postcard is courtesy of 66postcards.