Old Wink Cemetery
Wink, Winkler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
"Ghost" burial plot with 26 unmarked graves of unidentified, unfortunates, or men traveling under aliases during 1926-29 oil boom violence. All vestiges of graves lost in winds, shifting sands. Plot dedicated to memory of those with names known only to God. "We raised not a stone, but left him alone..." Wolfe (1964)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This lonely plot on the West Texas plains holds 26 unmarked graves from the violent oil boom of 1926–29, when Wink exploded into a rough boomtown. Those buried here were unidentified, unfortunate, or men living under aliases, their graves long since erased by wind and shifting sand. The 1964 marker dedicates the ground to those "known only to God."
Why it matters
The cemetery is a stark reminder of the lawless human cost of the Permian Basin oil booms that remade West Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wink
Wink, TX
The land beneath Wink was Comanche country until 1874, then range for the sprawling "W" cattle ranch. Everything changed in 1926, when Roy Westbrook struck oil in the Permian Basin just north of here and a town materialized almost overnight, swelling with ten to twenty thousand fortune-seekers. Named for Confederate officer C. M. Winkler, Wink became a raw emblem of West Texas's headlong rush from open range to oil derricks.
Winkler County Discovery Well
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Just before midnight on September 3, 1926, this well came in with great blasts of oil and rock, becoming the first of 612 wells in the vast Hendrick Field on the T.G. Hendrick ranch — land drillers Roy A. Westbrook and his associate had leased for a dime an acre in a region nicknamed the "Wildcatters' graveyard." Reaching 3,049 feet, it produced 235,000 barrels before being plugged in 1939. The data gathered here guided later drilling of the region's major oil-bearing formations.
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Winkler County's first post office opened near here in 1908 on the John Howe ranch, serving 300 people with mail twice a week. The Pueblo Investment Company promoted the Duval townsite nationwide, opening it in March 1910 with free lots, a picnic, and a cowboy tournament—but when Kermit won the county seat, Duval withered. After oil was struck in 1928 its townsite rights were canceled, leaving the ownership of many 1910 lots tangled to this day.
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For fifty years West Texas settlers met their religious needs through camp meetings, circuit riders, and singings held at ranches and schoolhouses. When this church was organized in 1928, it worshiped in Kermit's old 1910 courthouse, bought for a single dollar. After oil transformed the region, generous ranchers built the present brick edifice — the first brick building in Kermit — on the site of that first church, dedicating it in 1938.