Business View Magazine - November 2016

82 Business View Magazine - November 2016 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-