Northwest Extension Oilfield
Burkburnett, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Oil exploration and production in this area was minimal until April 17, 1919, when the Bob Waggoner Well No. 1 blew in at 4,800 barrels per day. It was the first well in what became known as the Northwest Extension Oilfield, comprised of approximately 27 square miles on the former S. Burk Burnett Wild Horse Ranch. R.M. "Bob" Waggoner's well led to a boom, and the area was suddenly thick with oil derricks. The hastily organized tent cities of Thrift, Springtown, Morgan City, Waggoner City, Bridgetown and Bradley's Corner supported the industry. Today, sparsely sited pump jacks continue to draw oil, but in far smaller quantities than the early wells of Wichita County. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Oil drew little attention here until April 17, 1919, when the Bob Waggoner Well No. 1 blew in at 4,800 barrels a day, opening the Northwest Extension Oilfield on the former Burk Burnett ranch. A frenzy of derricks followed, and hastily built tent cities—Thrift, Springtown, Waggoner City, and others—sprang up to serve the boom. Today only scattered pump jacks work the field that once roared.
Why it matters
The strike captures the wildcatting oil booms that reshaped early-20th-century Texas, minting instant boomtowns and fueling the state's rise as an energy power.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the second decade of the 20th century, North Texas had become one of the most electrifying places in America to be holding a mineral lease. This was the Progressive and Modern era, when the internal combustion engine was remaking transportation and the appetite for oil seemed bottomless. A single lucky strike could turn empty ranchland into a roaring industrial camp within weeks.
The country around Burkburnett, in Wichita County near the Red River, had seen only minimal oil activity. Much of the land had been part of the great S. Burk Burnett ranching empire — the famous Wild Horse Ranch — cattle country far more than oil country. That was about to change with a violence that surprised nearly everyone.
The boom-and-bust rhythm of oil was already well known elsewhere in Texas, but each new field had its own founding moment: the day a well "blew in" and the rush began. For this stretch of Wichita County, that day arrived in the spring of 1919.
People & events
On April 17, 1919, the Bob Waggoner Well No. 1 blew in at a staggering 4,800 barrels a day. It was the discovery well of what became the Northwest Extension Oilfield, a patch of roughly 27 square miles carved out of the former Burnett ranch.
R.M. "Bob" Waggoner's gusher set off exactly the kind of frenzy the era was famous for. Almost overnight the landscape bristled with oil derricks, packed so close together they seemed to grow like a forest. Fortunes and hopes rode on every new hole punched into the ground.
To house and feed the sudden army of workers, tent cities threw themselves up across the field — places with names like Thrift, Springtown, Morgan City, Waggoner City, Bridgetown, and Bradley's Corner. These were instant communities, built for the boom and dependent on it, the human scaffolding around an industrial gold rush.
Its place in the American story
The Northwest Extension is a vivid example of the wildcatting oil booms that reshaped early-20th-century Texas and helped make the state an energy powerhouse. Strikes like this one converted quiet agricultural districts into feverish industrial zones and minted boomtowns almost overnight.
The pattern captured here — a single dramatic gusher, a stampede of drillers, a rash of hastily built settlements — played out repeatedly across Texas and the wider oil frontier. It fed the fuel supply an increasingly motorized nation demanded, and it drew workers and speculators from far and wide chasing a piece of the strike.
The aftermath is just as characteristic. The early wells' enormous flows could not last. Today only sparsely scattered pump jacks still draw oil here, in far smaller quantities than in those first roaring years — a reminder that boomtowns often outlive their booms only as memories and a few working pumps.
If you visit
This is a place to read the landscape rather than tour a building. Look out across the country around Burkburnett and picture it thick with derricks in 1919; today the scene is quieter, punctuated by the slow, patient nod of pump jacks still working a field that once thundered.
The old tent cities — Thrift, Waggoner City, and the rest — were creatures of the boom, and much of that world has faded back into ranch and oil country. Part of the pleasure of standing here is imagining the noise and crowds that filled these open spaces for a few frantic years.
If you're tracing Texas oil history on a road trip through the northern part of the state, this spot pairs the drama of the gusher with the long, low hum of what came after. It rewards a slow look and a bit of imagination more than a checklist of sights.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · R.M. "Bob" Waggoner
- · S. Burk Burnett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Thrift
Burkburnett vicinity, TX
Springing up around 1919 amid the northwestern reaches of the Burkburnett oil boom, the tent town of "Newtown" or "Thrift" briefly boasted the area's only bank. Fire plagued the flimsy settlement — a 1920 blaze sparked by lightning striking an oil tank killed two and destroyed much of the town — and as the boom faded its population dwindled until, today, every building is gone.
Bridgetown
Burkburnett, TX
When the Burkburnett oil field pushed northwest in 1919, Bridgetown erupted at the Texas end of a mile-long toll bridge over the Red River, becoming the wealthiest of a dozen boom camps as lease values soared from $10 to $20,000 an acre. This tent-and-shanty city of thousands even drew the U.S. Supreme Court to station a receiver—Frederick A. Delano, uncle of future president Franklin D. Roosevelt—to settle riverbed oil disputes with help from the Texas Rangers. As the oil ran thin the town collapsed, and by 1935 the post office had closed and the land returned to range.
Receiver Bridge
Burkburnett, TX
When the Burkburnett oil boom sent drillers into the bed of the meandering Red River around 1920, it reignited an old question: exactly where did Texas end and Oklahoma begin? The U.S. Supreme Court placed the disputed land under federal control, naming Frederick A. Delano — uncle of future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt — as receiver. To reach the derricks he ordered a one-lane wooden bridge built to midstream; the boundary was fixed at the river's south bank in 1923, and a 1935 flood later wrecked the span.
Charley Lee Coe
Burkburnett, TX
Charley Lee Coe was an oil-field driller in the Burkburnett boom country, living with his wife and three children in early 1923. On a morning he had planned to take his daughter to the county fair, he saw a neighbor's house ablaze and pushed through the smoke to reach two small boys trapped in a bedroom. One child was pulled to safety through a knocked-out door panel, but the flames overtook Coe and the younger boy. The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded him a posthumous Gold Medal and a pension for his family.