Clayco #1 Oil Well

The well site is private land north of Electra, and no route is given here. The town it struck was already settled. The Waggoners loaded cattle at a railroad switch in 1885, the post office was first called Beaver, and in 1902 residents chose the name Electra for W. T. Waggoner's daughter. Waggoner had been drilling for water when Clayco No. 1 blew in on April 1, 1911. The population reached 5,000 within months, yet because the oil land was already leased, the tent-city chaos of other booms never arrived. About ten million barrels flowed by the mid-1920s.

What the plaque says

Clayco #1 Oil Well Clayco No. 1 Woodruff-Putnam, 1628 feet. Here flowed oil April 1, 1911, opening one of the world's greatest oil fields. Crew - Hal Hughes, Sam Turnbo, S. C. "Dad" Massengill, Lamar Weathersby, Clabe Moody, Richard Harper, Ed Beeler, A. F. Dennison, R. T. Craig.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Red River Valley Museum — 24 mi
  Vernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.
• Kell House Museum — 26 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 — 27 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.
• Doan's Crossing — 28 mi
  A store, an adobe house and a granite marker of ranch brands at the Red River ford where the Western Trail herds left Texas, kept alive by a May picnic held since 1884.

More markers nearby

• Tenth Cavalry Creek — 9.7 mi
• Trinity Lutheran Church — 13 mi
• Receiver Bridge — 14 mi
• KMA Oilfield — 15 mi