Archer County Discovery Well

By 1930 Archer County was a major shallow producer, and oil carried it through a farm decline: the Depression cut the county from 9,684 people in 1930 to 7,599 in 1940, when only 501 farms remained. Production that year was 4,124,500 barrels. World War II pushed it past 8,162,000 barrels in 1944, and it reached almost 12,000,000 in 1950. Output then fell, to 3,760,086 barrels in 1979 and 1,510,840 in 2000. By January 1, 2001, more than 489,066,000 barrels had come out of Archer County since 1911.

What the plaque says

M. P. Andrews No. 1, drilled in 1911, reached oil sands at 920 feet. Well first flowed oil, March, 1912, at rate of 10 barrels a day. Production in this shallow sand development area fell off when oil prices dropped, but rose after other pools in the region were tapped from 1916 to 1921. Since then, Archer County has become one of the state's most productive. The Hull-Silk-Sikes Well, 1939, opened a major field. More than 333 million barrels of crude oil have been produced by the county since 1911, with Andrews No. 1 still pumping. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — steps away
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 18 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Kell House Museum — 23 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 23 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.

More markers nearby

• A Jesse James Hideout — steps away
• Camp Cureton, C.S.A. — steps away
• Archer City Methodist Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Archer City — steps away