Odessa
Odessa, Ector County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After the Texas and Pacific Railway extended its line to the South Plains of Texas in 1881, the Odessa Land and Townsite Company of Zanesville, Ohio, began promotional efforts to attract settlers to its property along the rail line. Regular excursion trains brought many settlers to the area, including Charles and Lucy White, who came with their family from Indiana and helped transform this area from prairie to city. Their 1887 home serves as a museum today, a reminder of Odessa's early development. Odessa's first post office opened in 1885. The town was platted the following year and became county seat when Ector County was formally organized in 1891. The first elected county commissioners were M.G. Buchanan, J.W. Driven, James Bolton and J.L. Gray. Located in the Permian Basin, in the midst of great oil and natural gas reserves, Odessa was a small farming and ranching town until oil was discovered on the W.E. Connell Ranch (16 mi. SW) in 1926. Growth was rapid, and the city was incorporated the following year, with S.R. McKinney as first mayor. By 1930, Odessa was an established oil center and after World War II, it became a major distribution and processing point in the petrochemical industry. The city of Odessa serves as a vital trading center for this part of Texas and boasts civic, cultural and educational opportunities for citizens and visitors alike. With its roots in cattle and oil, the community is an important reflection of Texas history and heritage. (1967, 2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After the Texas and Pacific Railway reached the area in 1881, an Ohio townsite company promoted Odessa to settlers, and excursion trains carried families like the Whites of Indiana out to the West Texas prairie. The town gained a post office in 1885, was platted in 1886, and became county seat when Ector County organized in 1891. A farming and ranching community until oil was struck nearby in 1926, Odessa boomed into a major petrochemical center after World War II.
Why it matters
Odessa's story compresses the great engines of West Texas growth—the railroad, the cattle range, and the Permian Basin oil boom—into a single city's rise.
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Related people
- · Charles White
- · Lucy White
- · S.R. McKinney
Related events
- · Permian Basin oil discovery (1926)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Midland County
Midland, TX
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.
Odessa Land & Townsite Company
Odessa, TX
In 1886 the Texas & Pacific Railroad handed 640 acres of its land grant to John Hoge of Zanesville, Ohio, who formed the Odessa Land & Townsite Company to sell off town lots — prime house lots for $150, business lots for $200. He flooded the eastern states with literature touting rich soil, pure water, and a healthful climate, and the railroad ran excursion trains with free sleeping cars to lure buyers. A small frame land office stood on this site until 1911, later serving as school and church.
Odessa Telephone Exchange
Odessa, TX
Odessa's telephone exchange opened around 1897 in the early years of rural Texas telephony, when connecting far-flung ranches meant improvising with whatever ran across the land. Under pioneer rancher A. Quincy Cooper, service reached the countryside by stringing calls along barbed-wire fence lines. In a remarkable coincidence, Cooper's repair work on one such line in 1915 briefly broke into the first transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, and the exchange was folded into Southwestern Bell in 1928.
White-Pool House
Odessa, TX
Charles White came west from Indiana in the 1880s chasing opportunity and a drier climate, and in 1887—four years before Ector County even organized—he and his sons built this two-story brick house on the open plains near Odessa. Modeled on their Indiana home but adapted to local materials, it stood on a 640-acre tract alongside White's mercantile store. Decades later, WWI veteran Oso Pool bought the place, and during the frantic housing shortage of the 1927 oil boom turned it to new uses before the family finally donated it to the county.