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Ozona Hotel, Old

Ozona, Crockett County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Built about 1893. From its early days, boarded teachers, visiting athletic teams and business callers in city. Noted guests of 1919-1921 were geologists and lease men seeking to develop the now-significant oil fields of Crockett County. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built around 1893, this Ozona hotel long boarded the traveling life of a West Texas town โ€” teachers, visiting ball teams, and business callers. Its most consequential guests arrived between 1919 and 1921: geologists and lease men scouting the oil that would remake Crockett County's fortunes. The building stands as a witness to the shift from ranching country to oil country.

Why it matters

It captures the pivotal moment when the Texas oil boom reached the remote ranchlands of the western Edwards Plateau.

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Themes & tags

Industry & InventionFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Ozona Stockman, The

Ozona, TX

Ozona's newspaper began in 1892 as the "Ozona Kicker," launched by Claude B. Hudspeth, who soon left publishing for a political career that carried him to the U.S. Congress. Renamed the "Ozona Stockman" in 1913 to honor the cattlemen who built Crockett County, the paper flourished for decades under editor W. Evart White, who modernized it and produced an ambitious anniversary edition in 1941.

The Perner House

Ozona, TX

This frame house began in 1893 when T. L. Hammonds hauled a three-room dwelling here from the vanished town of Emerald. Merchant Phillip Perner bought and enlarged it a year later, and after his death his widow Mary Ross Perner raised their eleven children beneath its roof. Later owned by county judge Ralph Jones, the house passed through the hands of families who helped shape early Crockett County.

Ozona's Water System

Ozona, TX

Ozona was chosen as the seat of Crockett County in 1891 precisely because of a producing water well, dug for land developer E. M. Powell, who laid out the town and donated its well, windmill, and public land. Residents first hauled water home by hand, horseback, and wagon before Judge Charles E. Davidson's Ozona Improvement Company drilled more wells and laid pipe. "Waterworks Hill," crowned with windmills and storage tanks, tapped the vast limestone aquifer that has carried the town through droughts ever since.