Coleman Ranch Field Discovery Well

Oil was discovered in Mitchell County in 1920, the Handbook of Texas says, and it helped steady the economy through the 1930s, then became an important source of jobs and income after World War II, even after petroleum prices fell in the 1980s. Production passed 390,000 barrels in 1938 and reached 803,184 barrels in 1948, 2,413,916 in 1956, 5,094,682 in 1974 and more than 6,500,000 in 1982. By January 1, 1991, the county's lands had yielded 176,890,444 barrels of crude since the discovery.

What the plaque says

(2/3 miles southwest) Completion of the Westbrook Field T&P No. 1 oil well in 1920 signaled the beginning of commercial oil production in the Permian Basin. In the rush of oil activity that followed, the P.C. Coleman No. 1 Well was drilled on land owned by Dr. Preston C. Coleman, physician, civic leader and promoter of early oil development in Mitchell County. Completed in January 1923, the well was a slow producer. After nitroglycerine was used to temporarily increase production, the well was capped with a cedar stump. Frank Kelley, landman for the Magnolia Oil Co., removed the stump in 1925, and the well began flowing again. When occasional pumping yielded only small amounts of oil, Magnolia abandoned it in 1940. Although not a significant producer, the P.C. Coleman No. 1 Well confirmed the possibility of further oil development on the Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin. In 1946, large quantities of oil were found southwest of the discovery well on former public school land filed on in 1900 by Dr. Coleman's son Walter. Marked today only by a concrete well cap on a concrete base, the site of the Coleman Ranch Field Discovery Well serves as a reminder of the early days of oil production in the Permian Basin. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heart of West Texas Museum — 13 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 14 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• Scurry County Museum — 15 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Hotel Settles — 30 mi
  Big Spring's fifteen-story hotel of 1930, built on ranch oil money, once the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, empty and roosted in by pigeons for decades and now restored.

More markers nearby

• Site of Town of Cuthbert — 1.6 mi
• Ira — 6.2 mi
• Dunn — 10 mi
• Site of Westbrook School and Church — 11 mi