W. H. Abrams Well No. 1

The Abrams gusher paid off on a dome that people had probed for nearly two decades. Locals called the rise Kaiser's Mound. A shallow well there blew gas and heavy oil in 1904, and another confirmed salt underground in 1908. Governor James Hogg leased thousands of acres in 1901, and more than twenty holes on that land came up dry before wells in 1917 and 1918 found oil. The Texas Company drilled several dry holes of its own first. When the July 1920 strike came, it was on the mound's north end, almost a mile from earlier production.

What the plaque says

W. H. Abrams Well No. 1 In 1920, Texas & Pacific Railway official William H. Abrams (1843-1926) of Dallas owned this old plantation land, then considered fit only for pasture. He leased mineral rights to the Texas Company (now Texaco, Inc.), whose drilling reached a climax on July 20, 1920. At 7:45 that evening a massive jet of oil and gas erupted from a 2,754-foot depth, heralding a major discovery now known as West Columbia Field. W. H. Abrams No. 1 was a gusher. Three pipe lines were laid at once to draw the oil to earthen tanks, filled by powerful steam pumps with over 20,000 barrels daily. For Abrams, this wildcat well was a second bonus, as land he owned in Mitchell County produced the first oil in the Permian Basin in June 1920. Locally, land that sold for 10 cents an acre in 1840 and $5 an acre in 1888 now brought $96,000 an acre for mineral rights, irrespective of surface values. Yet the boom days were hazardous. Brazoria County oldtimers suffered along with oilfield workers, all living precariously and dangerously until the flow of oil money led to better schools, roads and general social conditions. Half a century later, the socio-economic significance of the West Columbia discovery could be acknowledged as a nationwide contribution. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 1.9 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 15 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.

More markers nearby

• Home of George B. McKinstry — 1.5 mi
• Charlie Brown — 2.1 mi
• Columbia (First Capital of Texas) — 2.3 mi
• Columbia — 2.4 mi