Ector County Courthouse

The courthouse served a county the railroad had oversold. As early as 1881 Texas and Pacific promoters offered to haul farm machinery and household goods free for settlers and predicted splendid crops, ignoring the thin rainfall. The land proved best for ranching, and Ector County became known for fine Hereford cattle. Much of it belonged to the University of Texas. But land was cheap. "Land was pretty cheap out there," pioneer J. J. Amburgery recalled. "I bought seven sections of school land for $1 an acre." Settlers trickled in through the late 1880s and 1890s.

What the plaque says

Ector County Courthouse Seat of justice for Ector, created out of Tom Green County in 1887 and organized in 1891. The 1891 courthouse was frame, the remodelled town sanitarium, moved to the present square. Its first floor had rooms for the sheriff, court clerks and Odessa school, while the county and district courtroom was upstairs. As the only public building in town, it provided space for dances. socials and church services. Picnics and baptizings were held at the windmill and tank on the northwest corner of the square. As townsite restriction banned the sale of liquor, Odessa was usually quiet. However, fights broke out when settlers rushed to the courthouse to file claims on public lands. In 1904 a 2-story red stone courthouse was built just east of the early one. On the lawn in 1906 the Christian church was organized. At that time Odessa ha 400 people and little hope for growth, because of drouths and their effects on cattle raising. After oil discoveries of 1926 stimulated Ector's development, a 3-story cement building was erected in 1938. The fourth structure was dedicated April 12, 1964, by governor John Connally. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 0.4 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.
• Odessa Meteor Crater — 9.0 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.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 11 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 19 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.

More markers nearby

• General Matthew D. Ector — steps away
• Ector County Land Rush — steps away
• Site of The Odessa Sanitarium — steps away
• Odessa Land & Townsite Company — steps away