Million Barrel Museum

The Hendrick field in Winkler County came in faster than anyone could pipe its oil away, and in 1928 the Roxana Petroleum Company, soon to be Shell, answered with a concrete reservoir sunk into the ground at the east edge of Monahans, near the Texas and Pacific tracks. It covered about 179,500 square feet under a wooden roof. The tank leaked and the crude evaporated, and by 1930 Shell had stopped using it, citing the leaks, the losses and higher taxes on stored oil. The roof and its pillars came off in 1935.

What followed is the reason to stop. The empty bowl served as a parade ground in the 1940s and a place for square dances in the 1950s. Wayne and Amalie Long bought it in 1954, and in October 1958 Wayne filled it from wells he had drilled and opened Melody Park, with professional water skiers from Austin for the show. The water escaped through the same cracks, and the park closed the next day. In 1986 Amalie Long gave the tank and 14.5 acres to the Ward County Historical Commission, and the Million Barrel Museum opened on May 30, 1987.

The tank is the main exhibit, with a 400-seat amphitheater built into one section of its wall. Buildings moved onto the grounds include the 1909 Holman House and the town's first jail. The Rattlesnake Bomber Base Museum tells of Pyote Army Air Field, about 15 miles west, which trained B-17 and B-29 crews in World War II and afterward stored the Enola Gay from 1952 to 1953.