Site of Wichita Valley Refinery and Texas Oklahoma Fair

The refinery stood near one of the county's weaker pools. A shallow pool six miles south of Iowa Park was found in 1913, and the Handbook of Texas says production at Iowa Park and Fowlkes came from shallow, spotty sands that gave operators little confidence. In 1914 Wichita County crude fell to 82.5 cents a barrel. The county began 1915 with 1,025 producing wells and ended it with 1,134, yet output dropped to 5.8 million barrels. Higher prices and deeper drilling lifted it past 7.8 million in 1916 and 9.5 million in 1917, with seven gasoline compression plants.

What the plaque says

Wichita County's first oil refinery was built in 1914 at Iowa Park by the Wichita Valley Refining Company. Established on a small scale, the company soon expanded and by 1918 owned 53 tank cars, had 12 miles of pipeline, and was producing 2,500 barrels of crude oil daily. The operation was sold in 1919 to Texhoma Refining Company. In 1922 the company was succeeded by the Walker Consolidated Producing and Refining Company, which improved plant and pipeline operations. Although functioning only until about 1926, the refinery was significant in the county's petroleum industry history. The Wichita County fair, which began in Wichita Falls in 1922, moved to this Iowa Park site in 1928. Promoted by the local newspaper publisher, the county fair became a popular annual event featuring agriculture, livestock, and industry of the Northwest Texas and Southern Oklahoma region. The six-day festival became the Texas-Oklahoma Fair and Southwest Oil Exposition. The fair closed in 1962 due to declining attendance and revenue and fires that destroyed several buildings. The property was later developed into a retail center. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 10 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 11 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 21 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Royal Theater — 25 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.

More markers nearby

• Tom Lloyd Burnett — 0.2 mi
• Town of Iowa Park — 0.2 mi
• Site of Valley View School — 7.5 mi
• Van Dorn Trail — 7.7 mi