Mexia Oil Boom

The plaque says Mexia jumped from 4,000 to 50,000 within days; the Handbook of Texas counts about 3,500 rising to nearly 35,000. Colonel Albert E. Humphreys and his geologist F. Julius Fohs are credited with the 1920 discovery, though the Handbook adds a natural-gas strike in 1912, after ten dry holes. The field made 35 million barrels in 1922, its peak year, and 108 million by the mid-1980s. The crowd thinned fast: Mexia was near 10,000 by the mid-1920s, and voters adopted a city-manager charter in 1924.

What the plaque says

Mexia Oil Boom One of great free-wheeling oil booms of America before proration was enforced. Population in Mexia increased from 4,000 to 50,000 within days after oil discovery in 1920 at Rogers No. 1 Well, located 1.6 miles west of this marker, just off FM Road 1633 Earlier (in 1912), Blake Smith and other Mexia men had brought in a gas field. Believing oil also could be found here, they interested a veteran operator flamboyant wildcatter A. E. Humphreys-- who struck oil at 3,105 feet. By May 1912 gushers were flowing. Humphreys had 2,000 men; did a $4,000,000 business. His fortune later was estimated at $37,000,000. The boom was on. Other companies were formed. A second renowned wildcatter, J. K. Hughes, shared the leadership in developing the field to capacity. Millionaires, merchants, celebrities, operators and workers swarmed to Mexia for a share in the "Black Gold." Many undesirables came also, and one day were ousted by the thousands by Texas Rangers. In 1920-1921 first boom year, $5,000,000 went into construction; tanks for over 30 million barrels of oil were built; but even so storage area was inadequate for output. A park and clubhouse developed near this site by Col. Humphreys-- mementos of boom-- are still in use. 1967

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 4.1 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 7.3 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 9.7 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• Town Named for Gen. Jose Antonio Mexia — 1.6 mi
• Origin of the Texas State Teachers Association — 1.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mexia — 1.9 mi
• Alfonso Steel — 2.4 mi