When Braum’s celebrated its 50th anniversary of operations in 2018, a series of historic images were shared in state media and for the local event. This photograph was among the images that helped to tell the Braum’s story. In the middle of the last century, Bill Braum pioneered “vertical integration,” a business idea wherein every aspect from manufacturing to retailing is centrally controlled for quality. The first Oklahoma Braum’s Store was opened in Oklahoma City in 1968, but the company actually was launched by his father in Emporia, Kansas, in 1933. The Braums family moved their giant herd of 900 cows to Tuttle by trucking them down the interstate rather than the Chisholm Trail, as cattlemen did a hundred years earlier. Today the operation has grown to hundreds of stores in five states.
The Tuttle Then and Now gallery displayed at the First National Bank & Trust Co. in Tuttle was designed to commemorate the people and places that make Tuttle unique. FNBT has been an independent community bank serving central and southwest Oklahoma since 1892.