Permian Basin

The basin's first oil was shallow. Every field found before 1928 produced from Permian dolomite or sand less than 4,500 feet down, because distant markets and missing pipelines made deep tests too costly, and the Depression held deep drilling back until 1936. World War II changed that: wartime need justified deeper wells, which found oil and gas in every geologic system from the Permian to the Cambrian. The Horseshoe Atoll, a buried limestone mass about ninety miles across, trapped a line of fields nearly 200 miles long. In 1966 the basin produced 607 million barrels.

What the plaque says

Permian Basin One of the two richest oil fields in the world. Discovery began in 1920 at a Mitchell County Well. Next came the 1923 big lake strike, then the wild 1925 boom in Upton County, followed by production in Andrews, Crane, Ector, Martin, Midland, Pecos, Ward, Winkler and 24 other counties. In some years new wells averaged 38 a week. Fortunes were Mae, lost, then regained--all within months. So great were yields that oil brought 50 cents a barrel, while drillers paid $5.00 a barrel for drinking water. Area is 88,610 square miles, with center here at Odessa. Extends across a deeply buried prehistoric sea that more than 250 million years ago contained much fish and reptile life, including dinosaurs. Shores and islands later grew giant vegetation, until earth changes buried animals and plants in pockets that turned hydrocarbons into petroleum. In 40 years from its discovery, the Permian Basin, was producing 53% of total oil in Texas 20% of U.S. crude oil. It is one of the world's largest producers of channel carbon black. Other by-products sulphur, asphalt, synthetic rubber ingredients and petrochemicals. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 3.2 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 — 10 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 Cable Tool Rig — steps away
• El Paso Natural Gas Company's First Compressor Transmission Engine — steps away
• Prairie Dog — 0.8 mi
• Site of Odessa College — 1.2 mi