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Business View Magazine
The Tulsa Port of Catoosa
Where the barges are running
When Bob Portiss, Port Director of the Tulsa Port of
Catoosa, says that “Oklahoma is a maritime state,”
eyebrows get raised. “There’s no such thing as a navi-
gable waterway into the heartland of America – none,”
someone once sniffed to Portiss after he was advised
that Tulsa, indeed, is home to an inland, international
seaport. But it’s true. And Portiss, who joined the Port
staff in March of 1973, and was appointed to his cur-
rent position in 1984, tells the story of how the Port
came to be, and how it opened up the northeast sec-
tion of the Sooner State to the wider world of interna-
tional shipping.
“In the ‘30s, Oklahoma was known as the dust bowl,”
he begins. “And it wasn’t just Oklahoma, it was this
entire area. We suffered an incredible drought at the
same time the nation was going through the worst de-
pression it had ever experienced. Then we came out
of the dust bowl in the early ‘40s, and nature decided
she’d reverse the trend and gave us so much water
that we had some horrendous flooding – not only in
our own state, but in Arkansas and Kansas.”
“There were two leading members of Congress,” Por-
tiss continues, “one from Oklahoma - Bob Kerr the
founder of Kerr Oil Company, also former governor and
U.S. Senator, and one from Arkansas – John McClellan,
Senator and Chair of the Appropriations Committee. To-
