Winkler County Discovery Well

The field's riches came with water. As water began to cut into the oil in 1928, operators pumped as fast as they could, and on May 5, 1928, a voluntary proration plan limited the field to 150,000 barrels a day and one well to each ten acres. Production peaked in March 1929, when 577 wells yielded 5,304,360 barrels in a month. By 1931 every well was making water, 26.3 barrels for each barrel of oil. A gas injection project ran from 1946 to 1959 without much effect, and by 1991 the field had produced 260,957,163 barrels.

What the plaque says

Winkler County Discovery Well First of 612 Wells in Hendrick Field, a very prolific, 10,000 acre west Texas oil pool. This area, called "Wildcatters' graveyard", lay on the 30,000 acre T. G. Hendrick ranch. Drillers Roy A. Westbrook & Associate leased land at 10 cents an acre. Well arrived dramatically, in great blasts of oil and rock, about midnight, Sept. 3, 1926. Its eventual depth was 3,049 feet. Total production when plugged in 1939 was 235,000 barrels. Data gathered here was vital in future drilling of El Capitan reef lime, a major oil-bearing geologic formation. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roy Orbison Museum — steps away
  A volunteer-run room in the oil town where Roy Orbison spent his high school years, opened on request, with a guitar he played and his tinted prescription sunglasses.
• Million Barrel Museum — 20 mi
  An oil reservoir that could not hold oil, then a water park that lasted one day, now a museum in Monahans with the story of the Pyote bomber base beside it.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 22 mi
  A small corner of a 200-mile dune field east of the Pecos, where fresh water lies just under the sand and a forest of shin oak grows no higher than your knee.

More markers nearby

• Wink — steps away
• Roy Orbison — 0.2 mi
• Old Duval Townsite — 5.9 mi
• Colonel C. M. Winkler — 7.9 mi