Andrews County Discovery Well
Andrews County, Andrews County, Texas
Marker Inscription
C. E. Ogden No. 1, producing 200 barrels a day from San Andres lime formation was brought in, Dec. 1929, by Deep Rock Oil Co.--the Andrews County discovery well and first of 730 wells in Fuhrman-Masco oil field. Bought, Feb. 1932, by Tripplehorn brothers, of Fort Worth. Has now pumped for more than 35 years. Since 1956, Andrews has been top producing county in Texas and U. S. Fuhrman-Masco field has produced 55 million barrels of oil--its contribution to total of more than a billion barrels for Andrews County in May, 1965. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In December 1929 the Deep Rock Oil Company brought in the C. E. Ogden No. 1, a well producing 200 barrels a day from the San Andres lime formation—the discovery well of Andrews County and the first of 730 wells in the Fuhrman-Mascho field. Purchased by the Tripplehorn brothers of Fort Worth in 1932, it kept pumping for decades. By the mid-1960s Andrews had become the top oil-producing county in Texas and the nation, having yielded more than a billion barrels.
Why it matters
The discovery well marks the moment the Permian Basin oil boom reached Andrews County, transforming a remote ranching county into one of the most productive oil fields in America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
For most of its history, Andrews County, out on the flat, wide-open plains of West Texas, was ranch country: thin grass, big skies and very few people. That began to change in the 1920s, when oilmen realized that the Permian Basin, a vast buried geological basin under West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, held enormous reserves of petroleum. Discoveries elsewhere in the basin earlier in the decade had set off a wave of drilling across the region.
The Andrews County discovery came in December 1929, just weeks after the stock market crash that opened the Great Depression. It was an awkward moment to strike oil. Prices were about to fall sharply, and the country was entering hard economic times. Even so, a producing well proved that oil lay beneath Andrews County, and that knowledge didn't go away.
The oil sat in the San Andres lime formation, a limestone layer that would become one of the great producing zones of the Permian Basin. Over the following decades, steady and patient drilling turned that early promise into production on a vast scale.
People & events
The well at the center of this story is the C. E. Ogden No. 1, brought in by the Deep Rock Oil Company in December 1929. At about 200 barrels a day, it wasn't a spectacular gusher. Its importance was what it proved: oil could be produced from the San Andres lime under Andrews County. It became the discovery well for the county and the first of 730 wells in what the marker calls the Fuhrman-Masco field, also commonly spelled Fuhrman-Mascho.
In February 1932, in the depths of the Depression, the Tripplehorn brothers of Fort Worth bought the well. The marker tells you the result: by 1965 it had been pumping for more than 35 years. In an industry famous for booms and busts, that kind of steady, decades-long output is its own accomplishment. It's the reason this is a story about lasting wealth rather than a brief flash.
The field and the county grew together. By the time the marker went up, the Fuhrman-Masco field had produced 55 million barrels. Andrews County had passed the remarkable total of a billion barrels in May 1965, and since 1956 it had been the top-producing county in both Texas and the United States.
Its place in the American story
Oil from fields like this one helped power 20th-century America. It fueled cars and trucks, heated homes, ran factories and supplied the military. The Permian Basin became one of the country's most important oil regions, and Andrews County was one of its leading producers. A county that had once supported a few scattered ranches became, for a time, the most productive oil county in the nation.
The discovery's timing also makes it a good window into American economic history. A well brought in on the eve of the Great Depression and bought in its darkest years kept producing through the war years and into the postwar boom. Its long life follows the country's growing dependence on petroleum over the same decades.
The story is a reminder that the shape of the modern American West owes as much to what lies underground as to what grows on the surface. Towns, roads and whole local economies in this part of Texas grew up around wells like the C. E. Ogden No. 1.
If you visit
The marker stands in Andrews County, on the open plains of the Permian Basin, where the land is flat and the horizon goes on forever. Look around and you'll likely see the region's signature sight: pump jacks nodding steadily up and down, much as the Ogden well did for decades. The landscape itself is the exhibit.
The figures on the marker are worth stopping for: 200 barrels a day, 730 wells, 55 million barrels, a billion barrels for the county. Try to picture that much oil coming out from under this quiet ranchland, and the scale of the Permian story becomes clear.
Andrews fits easily into a West Texas road trip through the oil country around Midland and Odessa. For families, it's a chance to talk about where gasoline actually comes from, and how a single successful well in 1929 changed the future of an entire county.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Fuhrman-Mascho oil field discovery (1929)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Settlers of Andrews County
Andrews, TX
Andrews County sat on one of Texas's last frontiers, where Anglo settlement lagged some sixty years behind the rest of the state because of Comanche resistance and a punishing scarcity of water. O. B. Holt filed the first land claim in 1886, and hardy families like the Cowdens and Peter Von Holebeke followed, but by 1900 the county still counted only 87 people and did not organize until 1910. Windmill pumps and drift fences finally made ranching workable on the dry plains, and the 1930 discovery of oil turned decades of stubborn endurance into sudden prosperity.
J. S. Means Ranch House
Andrews, TX
Built in 1900, this is among the oldest houses in Andrews County, raised at the exact point where four claimants' land sections met so each could satisfy the legal requirement to live on his claim. After the group proved up their claims, they sold to Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Means, who by 1904 held fourteen sections and kept adding land to build a thriving cattle ranch. The operation ran cattle even after oil fields spread across the range in the 1920s.
Original Townsite of Andrews
Andrews, TX
When Andrews County was organized in 1910, the new town of Andrews rose on land homesteaded by Robert Madison "Bob" Means, who had begun ranching the West Texas plains with his father in 1899. In a colorful county-seat fight against rival Shafter City, Means famously deeded town lots to local cowboys so they could register as voters and swing the election. He served as county clerk and gave land and money to the growing town for the rest of his life, retiring comfortably after oil was struck on his land in 1934.
Billionth Barrel
Andrews, TX
When oil first flowed from the C. E. Ogden No. 1 discovery well in December 1929, Andrews County was a sparse ranching country of about 400 people. By May 25, 1965, the county's billionth barrel of crude rose from one of thousands of wells across nearly 200 oil fields, and Andrews had become one of the nation's top petroleum producers. The transformation brought paved streets, new schools, and a wealth measured in reserves rather than livestock.