Midland County

Midland's ranch country began with sheep and wire. Texas and Pacific promotions drew sheepmen after 1881, and Nelson Morris, the Chicago meatpacker, bought 200,000 acres from the state for a Black Angus ranch and became the first to fence county land. Cattle spread once ranchers found they could get abundant water from wells. In 1890 the county had twenty-nine ranches, 14,867 cattle and 13,364 sheep, and reported no crops at all. By 1900 there were seventy-three ranches and almost 45,000 cattle, while sheep had fallen to 2,257.

What the plaque says

Midland County (Created and organized, March 1885) First known as the junction of many trails and site of the last Comanche raid into Texas. In 1881 the Texas and Pacific Railroad was built; equi-distant between El Paso and Fort Worth, this became known as Midland. First settler was a sheepman in 1882. Cattlemen came with Herefords in 1888. Water wells and windmills lured small farmers. Became headquarters for 1928 Permian Basin oil discovery. In 1945 its first well came in. The "Midland Man," oldest skeletal remains in North America (18,500 B. C.), was found in 1954. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Museum of the Southwest — 1.0 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 1.8 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 — 9.0 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

• Former Site of Midland National Bank — steps away
• Site of Midland County's First Bank — steps away
• Staked Plains — steps away
• John Valentine Pliska — steps away