McCamey
McCamey, Upton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1926. Had 10,00 people in 1927. Named for Geo. B. McCamey, driller of discovery well that by 1964 had led way to opening of 31 oil and gas fields in Upton County. (Discovery well is 2.3 miles north of town). Center for horse, sheep, goat ranching. Has 5 parks. Home of Mendoza Trail Museum. Erected by Upton County Historical Survey Committee.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
McCamey sprang up almost overnight in 1926 when a wildcat well came in, and within a year some ten thousand people had rushed to the new oil town. Named for driller George B. McCamey, whose discovery well opened dozens of fields across Upton County, it settled into a durable life of ranching—horses, sheep, and goats—once the boom cooled. Its parks and the Mendoza Trail Museum keep the memory of that frenzied birth alive.
Why it matters
Instant oil towns like McCamey capture the boom-and-settle rhythm that populated West Texas in the twentieth century, where a single well could conjure a city from open range.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1920s, oil changed West Texas. For generations this high, dry country had been ranch land, with vast pastures, windmills and few people. Then wildcatters began finding oil beneath the region that came to be called the Permian Basin, and the landscape started to shift.
The 1920s were boom years nationally, too. Automobiles were spreading quickly, and the country's appetite for gasoline and oil seemed endless. A promising strike could draw drillers, roughnecks, merchants and speculators from across the country almost overnight.
McCamey was born in that fever. Founded in 1926, it belonged to a generation of instant oil towns that went up in months instead of decades. Tents, shacks and hastily built storefronts came first, and permanent streets followed.
People & events
The town takes its name from George B. McCamey, the driller of the discovery well that started it all. That well stands about 2.3 miles north of town, and it opened the way to far more than one strike. By 1964, according to the marker, Upton County had seen 31 oil and gas fields opened in its wake.
The rush that followed was astonishing. The marker's count puts the population near ten thousand people by 1927, just a year after the town was founded. Imagine open range turning into a crowded, noisy boomtown within a single season, filled with people chasing wages and fortunes.
Booms never last at full pitch, and McCamey's cooled too. What stands out is that the town didn't vanish the way so many oil camps did. It went back to the land's older rhythms and became a center for raising horses, sheep and goats, while oil and gas stayed part of local life. The townspeople built parks and a local museum, the Mendoza Trail Museum, to hold onto their story.
Its place in the American story
McCamey's story repeated itself across twentieth-century America: one well could conjure a city, and the rush could fade as fast as it came. The towns that survived, as McCamey did, usually found a second life in the ranching, trade and community ties that were there before the oil.
The oil fields of West Texas became central to the nation's energy supply. The wells around towns like McCamey helped fuel the automobile age, industrial growth and, later, the demands of wartime. Much of the nation's modern economy ran on the crude that came out of places most Americans never saw.
McCamey is also a reminder that the frontier didn't close cleanly in 1890. In West Texas, new waves of settlement kept coming well into the twentieth century, driven by resources underground instead of land on the surface.
If you visit
Drive into McCamey and look for traces of both of its lives: the oil industry that created it and the ranching country that sustains it. Pumpjacks, pipelines and open pasture often share the same view, which tells the town's history better than any sign.
The Mendoza Trail Museum, named on the marker, is the natural place to learn more about local history. Check ahead for current details before you go. The town's parks, which the marker proudly counts at five, are a good place to stretch your legs on a long West Texas drive.
This is wide, open country, so plan fuel and water with care. McCamey fits well into a road trip across the Permian Basin, where you can trace the oil boom from town to town and see how each place handled life after the rush.
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
- · George B. McCamey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Carved from Tom Green County and created in 1887, Upton County was not fully organized until 1910. It honors John Cunningham Upton, a distinguished Confederate officer killed at the Second Battle of Manassas in 1862. A land of cattle and sheep ranches, the county later saw oil wells rise across its range, and its seat moved from Upland to Rankin in 1921.
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