Joseph Sterling Bridwell

Bridwell first sold an odd barbed-wire stretcher in Wichita Falls; the Handbook of Texas notes that not one has ever been found. In 1921 he leased land on W. T. Waggoner's ranch and a block north of Nocona, where every location produced. His company once owned more than 700 wells in six states, and in the 1940s and 1950s he was the largest independent oil operator in Texas. His ranches in Archer and Clay counties reached 160,000 acres by 1952 and carried 6,000 head of livestock. In the 1950s he offered employees a fifty-dollar yearly bonus not to smoke.

What the plaque says

JOSEPH BRIDWELL WAS BORN MARCH 23, 1885, NEAR NORTHVIEW, MISSOURI. HE MOVED TO WICHITA FALLS IN 1909 AND WENT INTO THE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS. BY 1915, BRIDWELL BEGAN BUYING, SELLING, AND TRADING OIL LEASES. HIS FIRST VENTURE IN DRILLING WAS THE CASHION OIL COMPANY IN 1917, AND HE FORMED THE BRIDWELL OIL COMPANY IN 1927. WHEN A GROUP OF OIL OPERATIVES MET TO PROTEST FALLING OIL PRICES, THE NORTH TEXAS OIL AND GAS ASSOCIATION, NOW TEXAS ALLIANCE OF ENERGY PRODUCERS, WAS FORMED. BRIDWELL SERVED AS ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT IN 1933 AND WAS ONE OF THE REPRESENTATIVES WHO MET TO FORM A CODE OF FAIR COMPETITION KNOWN AS THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT IN 1933. BRIDWELL ALSO HAD A PASSION FOR RANCHING. IN 1932 HE PURCHASED BRIDWELL HEREFORD RANCH WHERE HE PRODUCED BETTER CATTLE FOR TEXAS AND THE SOUTHWEST. HE ACQUIRED A BULL, LARRY DOMINO, WHO WITH HIS PROGENY WENT ON TO WIN COUNTLESS TROPHIES AND SIRE A TOP HEREFORD BLOOD LINE. IN 1949, BRIDWELL INITIATED THE J.S. BRIDWELL SOIL BUILDERS AWARDS, WHICH OFFERED PRIZES FOR CONSERVATION IN SEVERAL FARMING AREAS. THIS PROGRAM WAS IN EFFECT UNTIL HIS DEATH. BESIDES BEING A LEADER IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY, BRIDWELL WAS ACTIVE IN PUBLIC SERVICE. HE WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN FOUNDING THE WEST TEXAS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, GAVE THE CITY LAND FOR A PARK AND GAVE LIBERALLY TO THE METHODIST CHILDREN'S HOME IN WACO AND THE BRIDWELL LIBRARY AT THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY. HE SOLD THE GOVERNMENT 300 ACRES FOR ONE DOLLAR WHICH HELPED LOCATE SHEPPARD FIELD (LATER SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE) HERE IN 1940; SOLD HIS LAND TO THE CITY WHEN IT WAS IN DESPERATE NEED OF WATER, CREATING LAKE ARROWHEAD; AND FOUNDED THE BRIDWELL FOUNDATION IN 1949, WHICH FUNDS MANY CHARITIES INCLUDING UNIVERSITIES. BRIDWELL DIED MAY 9, 1966. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 0.7 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 0.8 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 13 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 19 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Kemp, Joseph Alexander — 0.5 mi
• Charlye Ola Farris — 0.6 mi
• Kell, Frank — 0.6 mi
• Lost Battalion — 0.6 mi