Kermit

Kermit nearly vanished before oil saved it. Kermit Roosevelt hunted antelope on the T Bar Ranch in northern Winkler County a few months before the town took his name. After the drought of 1916 drove many homesteaders and ranchers away, only Ern Baird's family remained in town in 1924, a single student attended school for five months that year, and by 1926 only three houses and the courthouse were in use. Then the Hendrick field came in. Kermit reported 1,000 people in 1927 and 1,500 by 1929, and the Texas-New Mexico Railway arrived on March 4, 1929.

What the plaque says

Kermit County Seat of Winkler County. Organized in 1910. Incorporated in 1938. Name for Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had visited a local ranch. One of the top oil and gas producing counties in state. Ranch center. Gateway to New Mexico. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roy Orbison Museum — 8.1 mi
  A volunteer-run room in the oil town where Roy Orbison spent his high school years, opened on request, with a guitar he played and his tinted prescription sunglasses.
• Million Barrel Museum — 21 mi
  An oil reservoir that could not hold oil, then a water park that lasted one day, now a museum in Monahans with the story of the Pyote bomber base beside it.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 22 mi
  A small corner of a 200-mile dune field east of the Pecos, where fresh water lies just under the sand and a forest of shin oak grows no higher than your knee.

More markers nearby

• Winkler County — 0.3 mi
• Moorhead Cable Tool Rig — 0.5 mi
• Colonel C. M. Winkler — 1.1 mi
• Old Duval Townsite — 2.9 mi