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The Ponca City Chamber of Commerce is proud of its part in the building of Ponca City. The present organization is a direct descendent of the old Ponca City Commercial Club which function as the center of community activity during the lean years of the 1900's. The Commercial Club in turn was the outgrowth of the old Board of Trade which distinguished itself by its community service in the 1890's.

At all times and under all these names the business, professionals and civic leaders of the community have met on common ground to engage in cooperative leadership in the building of a city.

Within the three weeks after the opening of the Cherokee Strip, the Ponca City Board of Trade was organized, and in the miraculously short time of 60 days, had built a first class schoolhouse for the education of the children of Ponca a City. State historians agree that this was the first complete schoolhouse built, equipped and opened in the Cherokee Strip. Almost immediately the first completed equipped church in the Cherokee Strip was dedicated here in Ponca City, and it is notable that on the day of dedication all bills had been paid and the church was free of debt.

Within the first year after the opening wires were strung and the streets of Ponca City were electrically lighted, another "first" in Cherokee Strip history. Current was furnished through these lines from the steam plant of the Ponca City Mill which itself was the first among the mills of the Cherokee Strip.

Cooperation of the citizens in the Ponca Townsite Club which in a short time sold 2,300 membership certificates and planned a town within easy access of a fresh water supply, a railroad, a river and two Indian reservations was another notable early instance of far-sighted cooperation.

From these outstanding achievements of the first year on down to the building of the railroad station, which designated the city as a stop on the Santa Fe, the paving of streets, the creation of a Municipal Water and Light Department, the adoption of the city commission form of government, the locating of a glass plant and a small oil refinery, the building of schools, churches, libraries and through all the steps which have made a modern city out of a struggling frontier town, Ponca City's commercial organization by whatever its current name, has exercised constructive leadership.