Site of J.H. McCleskey No. 1, Discovery Well of the Ranger Oil Boom

Within a year of this well's strike, Ranger grew from about 1,000 people to 30,000, mostly men. W. K. Gordon's Texas Pacific Coal Company had leased most of the field, and as gushers came in it subleased tracts for as much as $8,000 an acre. Independent operators opened the Gray-Hightower, Parsons, Sinclair-Earnest and Lake Sand fields. The Brewer pool produced more than $2 million in oil in 1918. By 1919 eight producing horizons had been opened, the field had yielded nearly four million barrels, and the oil's quality and wartime demand brought about $4.25 a barrel.

What the plaque says

The Texas and Pacific Coal Company struck oil at 1,000 feet about 10 miles east of Ranger in 1915. This event raised the hopes of area ranchers, farmers, and businessmen struggling to survive an economic slump brought on by severe drought and boll weevil-ravaged cotton fields. Oil expectations mounted then subsided when subsequent test-drillings turned up dry holes. Desperate local leaders sought out Texas and Pacific Coal Company general manager William Knox Gordon in nearby Thurber to help them continue the search for oil. Contrary to the conclusions of some geologists, Gordon believed oil lay much deeper within the earth than the depths reached by previous test drillings. Gordon agreed to drill to a depth of 3,500 feet and on July 2, 1917, contractor Warren Wagner began drilling here on J.H. McCleskey's farm. On October 17, 1917, at a depth of 3,432 feet, McCleskey Well No. 1 hit pay sand and roared in with an estimated daily flow of 1,600 barrels of oil. The well was plugged on May 18, 1920. J.H. McCleskey Well No. 1 sparked the much-heralded, wild, and prolific Ranger oil boom that gained Ranger international fame as the town whose oil wiped out critical oil shortages during World War I, allowing the Allies to "float to victory on a wave of oil." (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 8.1 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 17 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Roaring Ranger — 1.5 mi
• First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County — 1.5 mi
• Merriman Cemetery — 1.9 mi
• Eastland — 8.1 mi