Midkiff

The oil under Midkiff lies in a formation once called the largest uneconomic pay in the world. The Spraberry-Dean sands of the Midland Basin are closely packed and tightly cemented, allowing an average recovery of only 15 percent, though the oil in place was estimated at more than 10 billion barrels. Seaboard Oil saw traces of oil in the sand on Abner J. Spraberry's Dawson County farm in 1944 but left the well dry. Once operators learned that wells drilled to the sands were never dry holes, a drilling frenzy followed in 1950 and 1951.

What the plaque says

Midkiff The remote community of Midkiff is situated near the intersection of the Midland, Glasscock, Upton and Reagan county lines. Settlement dates from the 1880s, when railroad companies building tracks through the region offered inexpensive land to newcomers. John Rufus Midkiff was one of the first cattle and sheep ranchers to homestead, opening a general store in 1902 in his home in Midland County to serve local cowboys and ranchers. The store had a post office named Midkiff and the area's only telephone with wires strung 30 miles to Midland along a barbed wire fence. A school also operated briefly in nearby Dameron City, serving ranching families until about 1911. The Midkiff area remained sparsely settled until the discovery of oil here in 1950. An oil field camp developed into a town called Hadacol Corner with a motel, cafes and other businesses. Oil exploration in the nearby Spraberry Field continued, and in 1952 the town had hundreds of active wells. That year the town received a post office and revived the name of Midkiff, this time in Upton County. Since the 1950s, area children have ridden a bus 75 miles round trip to school in the county seat of Rankin. At its peak, the town had four churches, although St. Thomas Catholic Church is the only active congregation today. El Paso Natural Gas Company built a large processing plant with company housing east of Midkiff in the 1950s, but it later automated the plant amid safety concerns. In the 1960s, cotton growers built a gin later organized as a cooperative, and in the 1970s a Woman's Study Club began a public library. Today, the local economy relies on ranching, gas and oil, and farming. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 28 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 31 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.

More markers nearby

• The Benedum Oil Field and Benedum Townsite — 22 mi
• Site of the First Court House Built in Reagan County — 22 mi
• Stiles Cemetery — 24 mi
• Glasscock County — 27 mi