City of Big Lake

Big Lake's first boom came with Santa Rita. In the summer of 1923 landowners and speculators sold oil leases for quick profits, new cafes, a hardware store and a lumberyard opened, and the hotel added twelve rooms. The town reported 1,500 people in 1927 and 2,000 the next year. The Great Depression cut that to 832 by 1931, and through the 1930s and 1940s Big Lake was a supply town for the oil fields. The Spraberry Trend, brought into production in the county on May 23, 1951, gave it a second, steadier boom.

What the plaque says

City of Big Lake The land on which the original townsite of Big Lake was located was owned in 1903 by T. H. Taylor who sold 320 acres to the Orient Land Company, which agreed to build a railroad station and lay out a town to be called Big Lake. The city took its name from a lake created by rain which gathers in a natural land depression about one and one half miles from here. Once filled by spring-fed water, it is now the largest dry lake in Texas. In pioneer days it was the only known fresh water between the Concho River and springs at Fort Stockton and was a campsite for Indians, Mexican traders and cattle drivers. Oldest house in Reagan County, the John Gardner house, is located near its banks. The town was established in 1911. Its first economic activity was a stockpen built by the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railroad, a hotel, and a grocery store. It grew up around the line of the railroad, and by 1915 had about fifty families. Big Lake was incorporated on May 28, 1923, and in 1925 became the seat of Reagan County. Land additions were made in 1914 and 1925. Today the city is a center for the oil and gas industry. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Alley Oop Park and Iraan Museum — 33 mi
  An oil-boom town named for Ira and Ann Yates, where the creator of the caveman comic Alley Oop once worked, and a park of giant cartoon figures beside the town museum.

More markers nearby

• John H. Reagan — 0.9 mi
• The First Bank in Big Lake — 1.0 mi
• John H. Reagan — 1.0 mi
• Martin-Castillo Expedition — 1.0 mi