First Oil Well in Hockley County
Sundown, Hockley County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On April 6, 1937, this well was completed by the Texas Company (Texaco, Inc.), flowing 502 barrels per day from a depth of 5,023 feet, on land owned by J. E. Guerry (1885-1956). The Guerry family purchased surface and 1/8 mineral rights on 127 acres, in 1929, from R. L. (Bob) Slaughter (1870-1938), who inherited over 160,000 acres of the Lazy S Ranch after death of his father, Col. C. C. Slaughter (1837-1919). Located in the vast Slaughter field, this well was the first of over 2,600 active wells in the county, which have produced over 400 million barrels of oil. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On April 6, 1937, the Texas Company brought in Hockley County's first producing oil well, flowing over 500 barrels a day from more than 5,000 feet down on land the Guerry family had bought from the sprawling Slaughter ranch empire. It opened the vast Slaughter field, and in the decades that followed the county's wells numbered in the thousands and yielded hundreds of millions of barrels of crude. The strike transformed a stretch of West Texas ranchland into part of the great Permian Basin oil province.
Why it matters
The discovery marks the moment ranch country became oil country, part of the mid-20th-century boom that made Texas synonymous with American petroleum and reshaped its economy for generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1930s, the flat ranch country of Hockley County on the South Plains of West Texas was on the verge of a transformation that would remake the region's economy. This had long been cattle country, part of the sprawling ranch empires that dominated the plains after the open range was fenced. But beneath the grass lay something that would prove even more valuable than grazing land.
The discovery came in 1937, in the depths of the Great Depression — a moment when a productive oil well meant jobs, royalties, and hope in a hard time. Across West Texas, the search for oil was pushing into new country, and each new field redrew the economic map.
Hockley County sat over part of what geologists would come to know as the Permian Basin, one of the great petroleum provinces of North America. The well completed here marked the moment this stretch of ranchland was revealed to be oil country too.
People & events
On April 6, 1937, the Texas Company — Texaco — completed this well, and it came in strong: 502 barrels a day flowing from a depth of 5,023 feet. It stood on land owned by J. E. Guerry, whose family had bought the surface and a one-eighth mineral interest on 127 acres in 1929.
The seller connects this single well to one of the great ranching dynasties of West Texas. The Guerrys had purchased their land from R. L. "Bob" Slaughter, who had inherited more than 160,000 acres of the Lazy S Ranch after the death of his father, Col. C. C. Slaughter. The elder Slaughter had assembled a cattle empire on the plains in the nineteenth century; his son held that vast domain into the twentieth.
So the story compressed into this marker is a generational one. A pioneering cattleman built an enormous ranch; his son inherited it; a piece of it passed to a farming family; and on that piece, in 1937, an oil company found the strike that opened a whole field. The retained mineral rights that ran through those transactions are the quiet thread tying the cattle empire to the oil boom.
Its place in the American story
This well marks the exact moment when ranch country became oil country — a transition that played out across Texas in the twentieth century and made the state synonymous with American petroleum. What began here as a single producing well opened the vast Slaughter field, and the numbers that followed tell the scale of it: over 2,600 active wells in the county and more than 400 million barrels of oil produced.
That output made Hockley County part of the Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil regions in the nation and a cornerstone of American energy for generations. The wealth pulled from beneath these plains reshaped the state's economy, funded its institutions, and helped power the country through the middle of the century and beyond.
The strike also illustrates a distinctly American pattern: the way mineral rights, retained and transferred through ordinary land deals, turned ranchers and farmers into stakeholders in the oil beneath their feet. A field of hundreds of millions of barrels traces back to a one-eighth interest written into a 1929 sale.
If you visit
This is a monument on the open plains, and the landscape around it is the point. Look out over the flat West Texas country and you'll see, scattered to the horizon, the pumpjacks and wellheads that grew from this single 1937 strike — the field it opened is all around you.
Standing at the marker, it's worth holding two images together: the cattle empire that once ran across this land, and the oil field that replaced it as the region's economic engine. The same acres carried both, and this spot is where one gave way to the other.
It makes a compelling stop for anyone curious about the history of American oil or the Permian Basin. There are no crowds here — just the wind, the wide sky, and the working machinery of an industry that began at this exact place. Let the marker set the scene, then look up and read the rest of the story in the field stretching out before you.
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 people
- · J. E. Guerry
- · R. L. (Bob) Slaughter
- · C. C. Slaughter
Related events
- · Discovery of the Slaughter oil field
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Sundown Cemetery
Sundown, TX
The town of Sundown rose on land that had been part of the sprawling C.C. Slaughter Ranch, and in 1931 the rancher's son Bob Slaughter donated ground for a community burial place. The first marked grave, that of Winnie Dell Hines Simmons, dates to 1933, and many who rest here were oil field workers drawn by the region's petroleum boom. Local garden club and volunteer firefighters planted the perimeter trees in 1962 as the grounds expanded.
City of Levelland
Levelland, TX
Surveyed and platted in 1912 as "Hockley City" by cereal magnate C. W. Post, this barren High Plains townsite won the race for county seat in 1921 — the first meeting of county officers reportedly held inside a Cadillac. Early Levelland made do with a 16-by-32-foot temporary courthouse, a well, and a community black-eyed pea patch, before the railroad arrived in 1925 and oil was discovered nearby in 1937.
Brooks Blacksmith Shop
Meadow, TX
The town of Meadow shifted to this spot to meet the railroad in 1917, and by 1922 a blacksmith shop stood on the site. Alabama-born, World War I veteran brothers Leslie and Herschel Brooks brought water-drilling know-how to the area, and through marriage and partnership the Brooks Blacksmith Shop became a three-generation family enterprise. Serving farms and ranches until it closed in 1996, the shop was also a gathering place at the heart of the community.
The Spade Ranch
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Isaac Ellwood, who made a fortune as one of the inventors and manufacturers of barbed wire, bought this vast South Plains range in 1889 from the veteran cattlemen D.H. and J.W. Snyder. Branded with the "Spade," the ranch was first stocked with calves from Ellwood's southern Renderbrook Spring holdings and eventually stretched fifty-four miles across several Panhandle counties before farmland sales moved its headquarters in the 1920s. Ellwood's descendants still own and operate it today.