Odessa

Nobody is sure where the name came from. One local legend credits a Native American princess who wandered into the Texas and Pacific's railroad camp. More likely, the Handbook says, railroad workers named the water stop because the country reminded them of home around Odessa in Ukraine. Since the 1920s the city's economy has ridden the oil patch's booms and busts, which have tended to come about ten years apart, and in 1990 the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, which began classes in 1973, set up a Center for Energy and Economic Diversification.

What the plaque says

Odessa After the Texas and Pacific Railway extended its line to the South Plains of Texas in 1881, the Odessa Land and Townsite Company of Zanesville, Ohio, began promotional efforts to attract settlers to its property along the rail line. Regular excursion trains brought many settlers to the area, including Charles and Lucy White, who came with their family from Indiana and helped transform this area from prairie to city. Their 1887 home serves as a museum today, a reminder of Odessa's early development. Odessa's first post office opened in 1885. The town was platted the following year and became county seat when Ector County was formally organized in 1891. The first elected county commissioners were M.G. Buchanan, J.W. Driven, James Bolton and J.L. Gray. Located in the Permian Basin, in the midst of great oil and natural gas reserves, Odessa was a small farming and ranching town until oil was discovered on the W.E. Connell Ranch (16 mi. SW) in 1926. Growth was rapid, and the city was incorporated the following year, with S.R. McKinney as first mayor. By 1930, Odessa was an established oil center and after World War II, it became a major distribution and processing point in the petrochemical industry. The city of Odessa serves as a vital trading center for this part of Texas and boasts civic, cultural and educational opportunities for citizens and visitors alike. With its roots in cattle and oil, the community is an important reflection of Texas history and heritage. (1967, 2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 0.8 mi
  Odessa's oldest standing building, an 1887 brick house of a family the Texas and Pacific drew west, later cut into apartments for the oil boom and now a free house museum.
• Odessa Meteor Crater — 8.9 mi
  A shallow bowl in the ranchland southwest of Odessa where a shower of iron meteorites struck in the late Ice Age, with a trail down into it and a small museum on the rim.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 11 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.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• The Jackrabbit — steps away
• Odessa Petrochemical Complex — 0.2 mi
• Earl George Rodman, Sr. and William Douglas Noel — 0.2 mi
• First National Bank of Odessa — 0.3 mi