Amarillo Helium Plant
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This plant, operated by the United States Bureau of Mines, was the first to produce helium from the extensive helium resources in the Texas Panhandle. From 1929 until 1943, it furnished almost all of the world's supply of helium. Operating around the clock, the plant extracts helium by liquefying the natural gas and separating helium from it at temperatures 300 degrees below zero. The natural reserves in these fields and in extensions into adjacent states contain more than 95 percent of the world's known supply of helium. This is also the site of the world renowned research center which provides fundamental data on the production and uses of helium. Helium is used for a variety of purposes: lighter-than-air craft, low-temperature research, shielded-arc welding; and in national defense, nuclear energy programs and space exploration. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Run by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, this plant was the first to tap the vast helium reserves beneath the Texas Panhandle, extracting the gas by liquefying natural gas at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero. From 1929 to 1943 it supplied almost all the world's helium, operating around the clock, while an adjoining research center studied the gas's production and uses. Panhandle fields and their extensions hold the great majority of the world's known helium, a resource vital to aviation, welding, low-temperature science, and later nuclear and space programs.
Why it matters
Amarillo's plant made the United States the world's helium capital, giving the nation a strategic edge in aviation, defense, and eventually the space age.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Helium Time Columns Monument and Museum
Amarillo, TX
Erected in 1968, this monument marks the centennial of helium's discovery in the sun's atmosphere and celebrates Amarillo's role as capital of the helium industry. Its four "time columns" were packed with books, documents, and artifacts, then sealed in a helium atmosphere to be opened after 25, 50, 100, and 1,000 years. The Texas Panhandle had produced commercial helium from natural gas since 1918, with processing plants near Amarillo from 1929 and vast quantities stored underground for industry, science, the military, and the space program.
William Henry Bush
Amarillo, TX
The Frying Pan Ranch was founded in 1881 by Amarillo pioneer Henry Sanborn and J. F. Glidden, the inventor of barbed wire whose fences helped tame the open range. When the partnership ended, Glidden sold the ranch to his son-in-law W. H. Bush, who became a noted philanthropist—endowing libraries and parks, patronizing the Art Institute of Chicago, and donating the land for Amarillo's St. Anthony's Hospital. His 1926 "Round Up House" was a birthday gift to his daughter Emeline.
Site of an Early Barbed Wire Fence in the Panhandle
Canyon, TX
In the treeless Texas Panhandle of the 1880s, fencing meant barbed wire — the practical version perfected by Illinois inventor Joseph F. Glidden by 1876 and marketed in Texas through agent H. B. Sanborn. In 1881 real-estate investors Jot Gunter and William B. Munson strung a line fence on this site to enclose a 240,000-acre horse pasture, part of a transformation that ranchers resisted, cowboys resented, and merchants welcomed. Barbed wire ended the open range, cut off the old cattle trails, and ultimately saved the industry by allowing controlled breeding and feeding.
Dr. Charles Newton Gould
Amarillo, TX
Dr. Charles Newton Gould, an Ohio-born, Kansas-raised scientist who taught his way into paleontology and geology, became a pioneer of using earth science to hunt for oil and gas. His reading of the Texas Panhandle's rock led him to pick the drilling site for the 1918 Hapgood–Masterson well, opening the enormous Panhandle-Hugoton gas field—the world's greatest known source of helium—and he set the location of the region's first oil well the next year. Gould also identified the Alibates flint quarries as the source of tools made by Ice Age Folsom hunters, a landmark discovery in American archaeology.