Helium Time Columns Monument and Museum
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Erected 1968, commemorating the 100th Anniversary of discovery of helium in the gaseous atmosphere surrounding the sun. (The discovery of traces of helium on earth was first announced in 1895.) The four time columns are filled with books, documents, and various artifacts that will tell future generations about life in 1968. After the time columns were filled, the caps were welded on and the contents sealed in a helium atmosphere. In twenty-five, fifty, one-hundred, and one thousand years from the time of filling, the four individual columns are to be opened. Helium is an element which occurs in commercial volume in natural gas produced since 1918 from wells in the Texas Panhandle. In 1929 the first of several helium processing plants began operations near Amarillo. Large quantities of helium extracted from natural gas are stored underground northwest of Amarillo, and will provide a valuable source of supply for many years. Once used only in lighter-than-air craft, helium now serves vital needs in industry, science, and the nation's military and space programs. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The monument ties a quirky Space-Age time capsule to a genuinely strategic American resource, reminding visitors that the Panhandle quietly supplied the gas that lifted airships, cooled rockets, and served the nation's laboratories.
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Related events
- · Discovery of helium in the solar spectrum
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Amarillo Helium Plant
Amarillo, TX
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.
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.