Midland County's First Producing Oil Well
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The discovery of oil in the Permian Basin during the 1920s helped sustain the area economy during the Great Depression, and many oil and gas companies established headquarters in Midland. Not until the 1940s, though, did Midland County begin seeing its own productive oil wells. Geologist H.L. Beckman worked with the Rowan Drilling Company to stake out Humble Oil and Refining Company's No. 1 Mrs. O.P. Buchanan Well at this site. They spudded the well on September 14, 1944 and completed in on November 6, 1945 at a total depth of 12,574 feet. The well produced 332 barrels of oil in 29 hours and became Midland County's first producing oil well. It was plugged on August 1, 1947. (1966, 2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Oil found in the Permian Basin in the 1920s carried the region through the Great Depression and drew company headquarters to Midland, yet the county itself saw no producing wells until the 1940s. Geologist H. L. Beckman and the Rowan Drilling Company staked Humble Oil's No. 1 Mrs. O. P. Buchanan well here, spudding it in September 1944 and completing it in November 1945 at a depth of more than 12,500 feet. It became Midland County's first producer before being plugged in 1947.
Why it matters
This well marks the moment Midland moved from oil-office town to oil-producing county, deepening its role at the center of American petroleum.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1920s, oil discoveries in the Permian Basin began to change West Texas. The basin is a huge stretch of buried ancient sea floor reaching across the southern plains. For generations this had been ranching country: wide, dry, and thinly settled, with towns that grew up beside the railroad. Once oil was found, geologists, landmen, drillers and investors came looking for the next big field.
Midland became an office town in the middle of all this activity. It sat between the fields rather than on top of one, and oil and gas companies set up their headquarters there. When the Great Depression hit the rest of the country hard, the oil business helped keep the local economy going. Paychecks from the oil trade kept Midland's stores, banks and boarding houses running.
Still, for all the oil money passing through it, Midland County produced no oil of its own for about twenty years. That finally changed in the 1940s, while the United States was fighting the Second World War. The nation needed fuel on a scale it had never needed before, and drilling deeper into the West Texas rock was worth the effort.
People & events
The story at this spot starts with a geologist, H. L. Beckman. Working with the Rowan Drilling Company, he chose and staked the location for a well for the Humble Oil and Refining Company. It was named the No. 1 Mrs. O. P. Buchanan. Wells were usually named for the owner of the land they were drilled on, and oil people across the county would come to know this one.
The crew spudded the well, meaning they started drilling, in mid-September 1944. The work was slow. The drill kept going for more than a year before the well was completed in November 1945, after the war had ended. By then the hole was more than twelve and a half thousand feet deep, well over two miles into the earth. That was a demanding depth for drilling at the time.
The result was worth it. In its first test the well produced several hundred barrels in just over a day, and Midland County finally had a producing oil well. The well itself didn't last long: it was plugged less than two years after it was completed. Its importance came from what it proved. The county that had managed the oil business for two decades had oil under its own ground too.
Its place in the American story
The Permian Basin became one of the most important oil regions in the United States, and it remains a major source of American energy today. Midland grew into one of the basin's main business centers. This well marks the point where the town went from managing other places' oil to producing its own.
The well also shows how the oil business was changing in the mid-twentieth century. The easy, shallow finds of the early boom years gave way to deeper, costlier wells that required skilled geologists, well-funded companies and specialized drilling contractors. Humble Oil was one of the major Texas oil companies of its day. Its willingness to drill this deep reflects how much the industry had grown.
More broadly, the story connects a single patch of West Texas ground to the growth of American industry. The oil that came out of fields like this one fueled cars, trucks, farms and factories through the postwar decades. Much of that growth depended on crews willing to drill two miles down on a geologist's recommendation.
If you visit
Most of what you'll see here is West Texas itself: flat ground, a huge sky, and the kind of open country where a stake in the dirt could end up mattering to a whole county. The well was plugged long ago, so don't expect a working rig. Take a minute to picture the derrick and the crew that worked here through the last year of the war and into the peace that followed.
The marker fits well into a longer drive through the Permian Basin. As you travel the region, you'll see pumpjacks, pipelines and storage tanks spread across the ranchland. Those are the long-term results of wells like this one. In Midland, the tall office buildings of the oil business stand out against the flat plains, which is a good reminder that this town grew up as the basin's headquarters.
If you're traveling with kids, ask them to guess how deep two miles is compared with the tallest building they know. Then tell them the drill here went farther than that, straight down. It's a simple way to show what these early wildcat crews managed to do.
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
- · H. L. Beckman
Themes & tags
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