Bobcat Hills
McCamey, Upton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for dens of lynx (bobcats) found her 1919 by a University of Texas geology team mapping the resources of the county. These hills, cretaceous formations, are part of an uplift in the southern Permian Basin. Associated with this uplift are the oil fields of the county. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967,
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1919 a University of Texas geology team mapping Upton County's resources came upon these cretaceous hills and named them for the bobcat dens they found among the rocks. The formations mark an uplift on the southern edge of the Permian Basin — the same geologic structure that cradles the county's productive oil fields. The landmark ties the region's deep natural history to the petroleum wealth that would define West Texas.
Why it matters
It captures the moment scientific mapping of the Permian Basin met the oil economy that transformed twentieth-century Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1919, West Texas was a land most outsiders still thought of as empty: cattle country, dry creek beds, mesquite and wide sky. Upton County had only a scattering of ranches. Yet Texans were starting to suspect that something valuable lay beneath that hard ground, and the science of reading the land was about to become big business.
The University of Texas had a direct stake in the question. The state had set aside large tracts of West Texas to support its public universities, and understanding the rocks under those lands was a practical matter as well as a scientific one. Geology teams went out to map counties like Upton, recording formations, landforms and resources in places that had rarely been studied in detail.
Within a few years that quiet work paid off in a big way. During the 1920s, oil discoveries across the Permian Basin turned the region into one of the most important petroleum provinces in the United States. Boomtowns grew where there had been open range, and McCamey, near these hills, was one of the communities the oil era brought to life.
People & events
The story of Bobcat Hills starts with a survey team from the University of Texas working its way across Upton County in 1919. Mapping in that kind of country meant long days in the heat and a lot of hiking over rough slopes, measuring and noting every rock layer. Somewhere in these hills the geologists found dens of bobcats among the rocks, and the animals gave the place its name.
It's a pleasantly human detail. Scientists who were cataloguing the county's resources, and ultimately its potential wealth, named a landmark after the wild cats that already lived there. The name has outlasted the survey itself, and it's a reminder that before the derricks and pipelines, this was the bobcat's country.
What the team was really reading were the rocks. These hills are Cretaceous formations, laid down long after the ancient Permian seas that give the basin its name. They sit on an uplift, a place where deep geologic forces pushed the layers upward. Geologists know that structures like this can trap oil and gas, and the oil fields of Upton County are tied to this same uplift. The hills the bobcats denned in were, in a sense, a signpost pointing down to the county's future.
Its place in the American story
The Permian Basin became one of the great engines of American energy. Oil from West Texas fueled the country's shift to automobiles and industry in the twentieth century, and the basin is still among the most productive oil regions in the nation.
Bobcat Hills represents the step that comes before any boom: careful scientific mapping. Surveys like the 1919 University of Texas work helped turn guesswork about buried riches into real knowledge of the rock structures that hold oil. The same pattern played out across the American West, where geologists' field notebooks came before the drilling rigs.
The story also connects to education in an unusual way. Oil found on Texas university lands came to provide major support for the state's public universities, so the rocks of West Texas helped pay for classrooms and laboratories hundreds of miles away. A geology team from the university, mapping hills in Upton County, belongs to that larger story of knowledge and resources feeding each other.
If you visit
Come to Bobcat Hills with a traveler's eye for landscape. Out here, the view is the attraction. Look at how the hills rise from the surrounding plain and notice the layered, rocky slopes. Those are the Cretaceous formations the marker describes, sitting on top of the uplift that shaped the county's oil fields.
Early morning and evening light bring out the textures and colors of the rock, and they're also the kindest times of day in West Texas heat. Keep an eye out for wildlife. Bobcats are shy and seldom seen, but the rocky ground that sheltered their dens in 1919 is still the kind of place they favor.
This stop fits well into a Permian Basin road trip. Pair it with time in McCamey and the surrounding oil country, where pumpjacks and pipelines show the oil story in the present tense. Bring water, respect private ranch land, and give yourself time to take in the scale of a landscape that kept its biggest secrets underground.
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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