McCamey did not exist until September 1925, when the wildcatter George B. McCamey brought in the Baker No. 1. A townsite company was organized the day after, beside a siding on the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway, and within six months a tent and frame city of about 10,000 people stood on the spot. Humble Oil ran one of the first refineries in West Texas here from 1927 to 1932. The boom ebbed in the Depression, and McCamey settled into an oil and ranching town.
The museum opened in 1966 and took its name from an older journey. Juan Domínguez de Mendoza, a Spanish officer from New Mexico, crossed the Texas plains in 1683 and 1684 after the Jumano leader Juan Sabeata came to El Paso asking for missionaries; the Handbook of Texas says he probably saw more of these plains than any Spaniard before him. The exhibits run from fossils and Native American artifacts to the oil boom, and they take in Castle Gap, the pass through the Castle Mountains that the Comanche called Weick Pah, gap-water, used by travelers to and from the Pecos crossings, by the Butterfield stages from 1858 and by Goodnight and Loving's herd in 1866.
Beside the museum in Santa Fe Park stand the Adrian House, a 1915 Western bungalow furnished as a family home, and the Santa Fe depot, moved from its place beside the tracks.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour