First Gas Well in the Panhandle of Texas
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The discovery well in the vast Panhandle-Hugoton Gas Field, largest known gas field in the world, is located one mile east of this point on the east slope of John Ray Butte. The geological structure was discovered by Dr. Charles N. Gould in 1905 while in the employ of the United States Geological Survey, and the well was located by him in 1917. This well, the Hapgood, Masterson No. 1, was started December 1, 1917, and completed at a cost of $70,000 as a gas well December 7, 1918, at a depth of 2605 feet. It produced about 5,000,000 cubic feet of gas per day. This discovery initiated the development of this great gas field and of the Panhandle oil fields. The gas field now extends 275 miles from the Texas Panhandle north into Kansas, with a width in places of more than 90 miles. Pipelines from this field transmit gas to Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and to most of the cities and towns of the mid-west. Lines also carry gas to Los Angeles and to other cities and towns on the west coast. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The structure beneath the Panhandle-Hugoton Gas Field—one of the largest gas fields in the world—was first identified by U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dr. Charles N. Gould in 1905. He sited the discovery well, the Hapgood, Masterson No. 1, which was drilled beginning in December 1917 and struck gas a year later at 2,605 feet, flowing some five million cubic feet a day. That well opened a vast field that would eventually pipe gas to cities from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Why it matters
This first well launched the energy boom that made the Texas Panhandle a national supplier of natural gas and reshaped its economy for the twentieth century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Texas Panhandle was a land of grass, wind, and cattle — a high, dry plain where the biggest business was ranching and the future seemed to lie above the ground, not below it. Amarillo was still a young railroad town, and the flat horizon gave few hints of the wealth waiting deep beneath the soil.
Across the country, this was the Progressive era, a time of engineers, surveyors, and government scientists mapping the nation's resources with new confidence. The United States Geological Survey sent trained geologists into the field to read the land like a book, and the Panhandle's quiet buttes turned out to hold a remarkable chapter.
When the first well came in just after World War I, it opened a new age for the region. What had been open range began its slow transformation into one of the great energy provinces of America, changing the fortunes of the plains around Amarillo for the rest of the century.
People & events
The story begins with a geologist's eye. In 1905, Dr. Charles N. Gould, working for the U.S. Geological Survey, recognized the underground structure that would eventually prove to hold an enormous reserve of gas. It took more than a decade for that insight to be tested with a drill.
In 1917, Gould himself sited the discovery well on the east slope of John Ray Butte, a mile east of this marker. Drilling on the Hapgood, Masterson No. 1 began on the first day of December 1917, and after a full year of work it was completed as a gas well in December 1918, having reached a depth of just over 2,600 feet at a cost of $70,000 — a substantial sum for the day.
The well produced roughly five million cubic feet of gas a day, a flow that announced the field's extraordinary promise. That single success set off the development of the surrounding gas field and the Panhandle oil fields that followed, turning a geologist's careful survey into a working industry.
Its place in the American story
A single well on a Texas butte rarely changes a nation, but this one helped power much of it. According to the marker's account, recorded in 1965, the field discovered here stretched some 275 miles from the Texas Panhandle north into Kansas, in places more than 90 miles wide — described at that time as the largest known gas field in the world.
What made it matter to ordinary Americans was the pipeline. By the mid-twentieth century, lines carried this gas outward to cities and towns across the Midwest and beyond — as the marker records, to places like Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, and Denver, and even westward toward Los Angeles and the Pacific coast.
That reach tells the larger American story of the era: local discoveries, knit together by steel pipelines and national demand, remade regional economies into pieces of a continental energy network. The Panhandle went from open range to a supplier of heat and power for distant kitchens and factories.
If you visit
The marker sits north of Amarillo out on the open plains, and the discovery well it commemorates lies about a mile east, on the slope of John Ray Butte. Come expecting big sky and long views rather than a bustling attraction — the drama here is geological and historical, not scenic in the usual sense.
Stand a moment and picture the winter of 1917, a wooden derrick rising against that horizon, and a crew spending a full year boring more than 2,600 feet into the earth before the gas finally came. It is a good place to feel how much of modern life begins in quiet, out-of-the-way spots like this one.
It makes a natural stop on a Panhandle drive, especially if you are curious about how the region's energy history began. Pair it with the wider landscape around Amarillo and you will understand why this flat country became so important to the nation's power supply.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles N. Gould
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Masterson
Masterson, TX
In 1927 three companies joined forces to build a natural gas plant and pipeline carrying fuel all the way to Denver, and a small company town of workers' cottages, a hotel, and a one-room school grew up around it, first called Bivins. World War II brought a second boom: a federal Bureau of Mines helium plant opened nearby in 1943, ringed by seventy-five new homes and a recreation hall for the Exell workers. Renamed Masterson after the post office rejected "Bivins," the community thrived until the 1960s, when residents were told to move on and the twin camps emptied by 1970.
The _X (LX) First Ranch in Potter County
Amarillo, TX
Established in 1877 by Colorado merchants W. H. Bates and D. T. Beals, the LX was one of the great open-range cattle operations of the Texas Panhandle, spreading across roughly 1,000 square miles between present-day Dumas and Amarillo. LX cattle were trailed north to Dodge City and on to the newly opened ranges of Montana and Wyoming as the buffalo vanished. A British firm bought the ranch in 1884, and when Potter County organized in 1887, the 38 LX cowboys voted to make Amarillo the county seat. Among its hands was Charles Siringo, later famous as a cowboy author and detective.
Moore County
Dumas, TX
Carved from the Bexar Land District in 1876 and formally organized in 1892, Moore County took its name from Edwin W. Moore, commodore of the Republic of Texas navy. In its early days stagecoaches and freight wagons crossed a thinly settled Panhandle where ranching was nearly the only livelihood. That changed sharply after oil and gas were struck in 1926, and the county's economy grew into petrochemicals, helium, cattle feeding, and grain.
LS Alamosa Ranch Headquarters
Vega, TX
This sturdy sandstone house was built in 1886 for the manager of the sprawling LS Ranch, owned by W.M.D. Lee and Lucien B. Scott in the Texas Panhandle. Stonemason Tom Nolan reportedly modeled it and its twin bunkhouse on a picture from an Arbuckle Coffee sack. Its first resident manager was Jim East, a former Tascosa sheriff, and the home stayed in one family's hands for generations after 1939.