Church & Fields Oil Discovery Well

The land under this well belonged to an endowment the legislature once thought nearly worthless. The Constitution of 1876 replaced the university's railroad sections with a million acres of unappropriated West Texas land, and when the University of Texas opened in 1883 another million acres was added, again land thought of little value. Grazing leases brought in only $40,000 in 1900. Once oil came, its profits were treated as principal and reinvested rather than spent, and by 1925 the Permanent University Fund was growing by more than $2,000 a day.

What the plaque says

Church & Fields Oil Discovery Well (Drilling site 2.25 miles southeast) Since 1839 Texas has set aside her public lands to finance education. The University of Texas at Austin acquired the land at this site in 1883, after the first owner, a railroad company, returned it to the state as worthless. For years McElroy Ranch grazed cattle here. On similar terrain 70 miles to the southeast the Santa Rita gusher blew in during 1923, and soon other university lands were being explored for oil. Church & Fields Exploration Company, composed of George M. Church and Robert Fields of San Angelo, obtained a permit late in 1925 to drill in Section 34, Block 30, in University Land on McElroy Ranch. On Dec. 28, 1925, contractor Burton F. Weekley and Driller John Garlin started the Church & Fields well, 2.25 miles southeast of this spot. In March 1926 this became Crane County's first oil producer, opening a new major field for west Texas. Soon other wells were drilled and local population rose from 27 to about 4,500. In Sept. 1927 county government was organized as a result of the oil field activity. Until 1955 the discovery well continued to produce. Since the day it proved successful and an asset to education and energy production, over a billion barrels of oil have come from University of Texas lands. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Odessa Meteor Crater — 19 mi
  A shallow bowl in the ranchland southwest of Odessa where a shower of iron meteorites struck in the late Ice Age, with a trail down into it and a small museum on the rim.
• White-Pool House — 23 mi
  Odessa's oldest standing building, an 1887 brick house of a family the Texas and Pacific drew west, later cut into apartments for the oil boom and now a free house museum.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 28 mi
  A small corner of a 200-mile dune field east of the Pecos, where fresh water lies just under the sand and a forest of shin oak grows no higher than your knee.
• Rankin Museum (Yates Hotel) — 31 mi
  The fireproof hotel Ira Yates built beside the Orient railway depot months after oil came in on his ranch in 1926, kept as it was down to the wicker lobby furniture.

More markers nearby

• William Carey Crane — 7.4 mi
• Juan Cordona Lake — 7.4 mi
• One Hundred Million Barrels of Oil From Block 31 Unit — 7.6 mi
• Charles Boothe Curry — 8.1 mi