The old boarding house in Burbank, Oklahoma had 12 rooms and was appropriately called, the Burbank House. Built to house oil field workers during the Burbank oil boom in the 1920’s It remained as a hotel until the bust. It appears to have been used as a private residence, at least up until 1993. The building is wooden construction with an adobe facade on three sides and a period correct "fish scale shingle" in the rear. A large cellar, was in the rear of the building, in the event of a tornado. This building is located down the hill east of the cache and one block south/
Burbank was founded in 1903 on the Osage Indian Reservation. The founder was Anthony “Gabe” Carlton, a mixed-blood Osage. He reportedly named the town after a cocklebur covered area nearby. A post office was established in the town in 1907.
Burbank had about 200 residents and an economy based on farming and ranching until May 1920 when E.W. Marland discovered petroleum northeast of the town. Burbank became a boom town and other towns in the area such as Whizbang sprang up overnight to exploit the rich petroleum resources.
Several major petroleum companies participated in the exploitation of the Burbank Field. Leases of oil land were obtained from the Osage Indians, usually by auction under the “Million Dollar Elm” tree in Pawhuska, the county seat and capital of the Osage Indians. Colonel Ellsworth Walters was the auctioner and more than a million dollars was often bid for the mineral rights to 160 acre tracts in the Burbank Field. Rich and famous oilmen such as Marland, Frank Phillips, L. E. Phillips, Waite Phillips, and William G. Skelly stood in the shade of the Elm tree and bid in the auctions. Oil production in the Burbank field expanded from 134,408 barrels in 1920 to a peak production of 26,206,741 barrels in 1923. Production dropped by one-half in 1926 and by 1930 the boom period was over. Burbank’s population dropped to 372 in 1930. The value of the 160 million barrels the Burbank field produced during its heyday was almost 286 million dollars.