Rafael Rios No. 1

The field this well opened ran about twelve miles long and two miles wide near Stairtown. By December 1924 it was producing 43,000 barrels a day, and that year's output peaked at 11,134,000 barrels. Davis at first controlled almost all of it through his leases but soon sold much of his interest to major companies. Production leveled off at about 2.5 million barrels a year in the 1930s and still ran between one and two million a year in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1989 Luling residents formed an association to build an oil museum.

What the plaque says

Rafael Rios No. 1 (Located 0.8 Mi.N, on Farm Road 671) Discovery well of Luling Field, a major Texas oil area. Wildcatter E.B. Davis drilled on land owned by R. Rios. Well came in Aug. 10, 1922, after 3 dry holes had been drilled in same area. Magnolia (now Mobil) Oil Co. bought filed 1926. By 1969, production was 135,000,000 barrels. Incise on back: Donated by Mobil Oil Corporation. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 12 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 17 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 23 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 24 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• Burial site of Rev. John McCullough — 2.2 mi
• Fentress United Methodist Church — 3.9 mi
• Rosenwald School — 4.9 mi
• Episcopal Church of the Annunciation — 5.3 mi