Penwell

The town took its name from J. H. Penn, a veteran West Texas oil operator, whose R. R. Penn Kloh-Rumsey No. 1 opened the Penwell-Jordan field. The townsite was laid out on November 8, 1929. Early residents lived in tents and shacks, and counts of them varied wildly, from 230 to 3,000 for 1930-31. In the early 1930s Penwell had six lumberyards, two hotels, rooming houses, filling stations, clothing stores, a doctor, a drugstore, a pool hall, a dance hall and a paper, the Penwell News. Drilling slowed, workers left, and by 1980 about seventy-five people remained.

What the plaque says

Penwell Birthplace of Ector County's Oil boom. First civic development here was wide-open town, "Derrick City", platted March 1927, after Dec. 28, 1926, oil discovery by driller Josh Cosden on land of W. E. Connell, near the old farming and cattle station, Judkins. However, when Connell well began pumping only 20 barrels a day, the boom crowd moved away. The city was abandoned. As nearby counties off the railroad struck oil that had to be shipped by the Texas & Pacific to refineries, Ector County in 1927 had a "Truck Drivers Boom" --a foretaste of the leadership in supply and servicing that was to develop progressively. Then on Oct. 14, 1929, on Robert Penn's land here, a 375-barrel per day well came in. With that showing, exploration continued, soon followed by the Penn Well, the 600 to 700-barrel a day gusher. In a busy, bustling and prosperous tent city, the Penwell Post Office was established June 30, 1930. This has remained a central distributing and shipping point for numerous fields in several permian basin counties, thereby establishing and earned reputation as "The Crossroads of the oil patch". (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Odessa Meteor Crater — 7.8 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.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 14 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.
• White-Pool House — 16 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.
• Million Barrel Museum — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• The Caprock — 3.5 mi
• Odessa Meteor Crater — 7.8 mi
• Captain Randolph B. Marcy's Southern Route Expedition — 12 mi
• Well's Point — 14 mi