Historical Marker
First Commercial Oil Well in Howard County
Garden City, Glasscock County · Texas
Erected 1969
Oil talk here began years before this well. In 1917 S. E. J. Cox, who also brought the first airplane to Garden City, drilled Glasscock County's first well on the McDowell Ranch and drew investors to a free barbecue of seventy-five cattle and fifty sheep, where some 10,000 people ate and watched horse races. Cox was later believed to have faked his discovery, and in 1923 he and the polar explorer Frederick A. Cook were convicted of oil fraud. Real production came in 1925, and landowners were offered $1,000 an acre for land bought at a dollar.
What the plaque says
First Commercial Oil Well in Howard County On Nov. 9, 1925, this wildcat well "No. 1 H.R. Clay" drilled by Fred Hyer, began pumping oil in a venture that hinted at vast oil resources in west Texas. The well on Clay's land hit pay dirt at 1,508 feet. Soon oil land speculators developed a great interest in this formerly "worthless" territory and other wildcatters flocked to the area. As a result of efforts here, the Permian Basin--one of the richest oil repositories in the state--was developed. Since 1925 Howard County has produced more than 300 million barrels. (1969)
Where it stands
32.08584, -101.39187 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Big Spring State Park — 11 miA CCC drive looping up Scenic Mountain, a 200-foot bluff above the town that grew around the only dependable spring within sixty miles of open Llano country.
- Hangar 25 Air Museum — 12 miA restored World War II hangar on the old air base above Big Spring, telling the story of the bombardier school of 1942 and of Webb Air Force Base, which trained pilots until 1977.
- Hotel Settles — 13 miBig 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.
- Lake Colorado City State Park — 32 miA 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.