First Producing Oil Well in Coke County

The Handbook of Texas follows the boom the well set off. Humble Oil opened the Bronte field in November 1948, and in 1949 the Bronte and Fort Chadbourne fields were proved. The Railroad Commission shut the Fort Chadbourne field for thirteen months from February 1952 to stop gas flaring, until Lone Star Producing built a $3 million plant to use the gas. The county produced about 1,082,500 barrels in 1948 and more than 12,795,000 in 1958, and oil taxes paid for new schools, roads and bridges, a courthouse, parks and swimming pools.

What the plaque says

Sun Oil Company's well - No. 1 Allen Jameson -- was staked in Sept. 1946, and struck oil Nov. 17. Intermittent drilling had gone on in Coke County for 30 years, but this discovery began a county-wide oil boom. Drilled by the Dallas firm of Roberts & Hawkins, the well hit pay dirt at 6,230 feet in fossil-bearing limestone 280 million years old. In a 24-hour test it flowed 168 barrels. Coke County recently ranked among the top quarter of oil-producing counties in Texas, with its 18 fields exceeding 6.4 million barrels annually. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Colorado City State Park — 24 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.
• Fort Chadbourne — 25 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Silver — steps away
• Richard Coke — 16 mi
• Fence-Cutting War — 16 mi
• Robert Lee Cemetery — 16 mi