Ector County Land Rush

Texas owned its public lands, and it gave away more than it sold. Between 1835 and 1942 only a little over 55 million acres were sold, bringing in about $202 million in direct and indirect revenue. Meanwhile some 86.5 million acres, more than half the present area of Texas, were given away outright: about 41.6 million by the republic and 44.5 million by the state. In the 1850 boundary settlement Texas gave up an estimated 67 million acres for $12.75 million. By 1900 no unappropriated public domain remained.

What the plaque says

Ector County Land Rush Here in 1904 a fight involved almost every man in Ector County, over filing a claim for 4 sections of public land. Elias Dawson and Charlie Lewis each brought friends to help him file. Before courthouse doors opened, several men had clothes or boots torn off, in foes' efforts to find filing papers. When the doors opened, a man was boosted over the heads of the crowd, and Lewis won the 4 sections of land. Texas as a republic owned over 200,000,000 acres of public land. She used land to attract settlers, pay her soldiers, set up school funds. At annexation, she retained her public lands--the only state to do so. In a boundary dispute she ceded 63,552,144 acres; used land to pay for railroads, harbors and canals; compensated civil war soldiers of widows with land; traded 3,000,000 acres for a state capitol. By 1883 her lands were over-committed. Free grazing had to be stopped. Terminations of leases and the corrections of surveys later made available some land for filing. This led to the 1904 rush. In one courthouse a man hid overnight to be first in line. Cattle chutes to a clerk's window would be lined for months with men hoping to file. Cowboys and farmers battled. Filing was a challenge. (1965)

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 Courthouse — steps away
• Site of The Odessa Sanitarium — steps away
• Odessa Land & Townsite Company — steps away