Midland County
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Created and organized, March 1885) First known as the junction of many trails and site of the last Comanche raid into Texas. In 1881 the Texas and Pacific Railroad was built; equi-distant between El Paso and Fort Worth, this became known as Midland. First settler was a sheepman in 1882. Cattlemen came with Herefords in 1888. Water wells and windmills lured small farmers. Became headquarters for 1928 Permian Basin oil discovery. In 1945 its first well came in. The "Midland Man," oldest skeletal remains in North America (18,500 B. C.), was found in 1954. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Midland sits where old cattle trails once crossed and where, tradition holds, the last Comanche raid into Texas passed. The Texas and Pacific Railroad reached the spot in 1881, and its position halfway between El Paso and Fort Worth gave the town its name. Sheep and Hereford cattle came first, then farmers drawn by windmill-pumped water—until the 1928 Permian Basin oil discovery made Midland the headquarters of a booming petroleum empire.
Why it matters
Midland compresses the whole sweep of West Texas history—Comanche frontier, railroad town, ranching country, and oil capital—into a single place.
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Related events
- · Arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railroad (1881)
- · Permian Basin oil discovery (1928)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Marcy Trail
Midland, TX
In 1849 an Army expedition under Captain Randolph B. Marcy, guided by a Comanche man named Manuel, crossed the dreaded Llano Estacado of West Texas and proved the staked plains could be traveled. The route Marcy plotted from Doña Ana to Fort Smith became a shorter road to the California gold fields, later carried the overland stage, and by 1881 guided the Texas and Pacific Railroad. This marker stands near that pioneering path.
Midkiff
Midkiff, TX
Tucked where four West Texas county lines nearly meet, Midkiff began in the 1880s when railroads sold cheap land to lure settlers onto the ranching plains. Rancher John Rufus Midkiff opened a general store in 1902 and strung the area's only telephone line thirty miles to Midland along a barbed-wire fence. The sleepy ranch country roared to life after oil was struck in 1950, spawning an oil-camp town before the revived name of Midkiff took hold.
Potton House
Big Spring, TX
Joseph Potton, an English-born master mechanic for the Texas & Pacific Railroad, built this Victorian home in Big Spring in 1901, using local Pecos sandstone, iron pillars, and zinc gable decorations from a Fort Worth architectural firm. A school board trustee, Potton retired in 1912 and lived here with his wife, often entertaining guests, before the house passed to their daughter's family. It survives as a well-preserved emblem of the prosperity the railroad brought to West Texas.
First National Bank in Big Spring
Big Spring, TX
Chartered in 1890 with $50,000 in capital, the First National Bank of Big Spring opened on the ground floor of a downtown building that also housed the post office. A rival, West Texas National Bank, followed in 1903, and both prospered through the boom years of the 1920s before the Great Depression brought hard times. The two institutions merged in 1934 to become the First National Bank in Big Spring.