Pure Oil Company Camp
Van, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the late 1920s, geologists from the Pure Oil Company determined that the presence of oil in the Van area was likely. The company had previously leased 17,000 acres in order to harvest the commodity, and oil was discovered on October 14, 1929 on the farm of W.T. Jarman. The Pure Oil Company held 80 percent of the oil leases in the area and administered the oil field operations on behalf of four other companies that had small leases in the area under the Van joint account. Although the Great Depression would soon grip the rest of the country, Van’s economy thrived. Pure Oil immediately began construction of a headquarters complex to manage the activities of the site and to house and support the many workers needed in the operation of the oil field. The Pure Oil Company camp was located on 107 acres one mile southwest of the Jarman Well, and when completed, the complex consisted of multiple structures, including an office building, seventeen residential houses, a geological laboratory, three bunk houses, a mess hall, a dormitory, a machine shop, a warehouse, a filling station, a water tower and a swimming pool. In July 1930 the Texas Short Line Railway Co. Completed a spur line from Grand Saline to Van (a distance of fifteen miles), erasing the only remaining barrier to Van’s explosive growth. The Pure Oil Company merged with and became a division of Union Oil Company of California in 1965, and the residential housing and related structures at the Van camp were closed. Although the camp no longer operates, the field is still producing oil today.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Pure Oil Company geologists struck oil on W.T. Jarman's farm on October 14, 1929, the Van field roared to life just as the Great Depression settled over the rest of the country. Holding most of the leases, Pure Oil built a self-contained company camp of houses, bunkhouses, a laboratory, machine shop, mess hall, and even a swimming pool to run the field and house its workers. A railroad spur completed in 1930 removed the last barrier to the town's boom, and the field still produces oil today.
Why it matters
The Van field shows how an oil strike could lift a Texas town while the rest of the nation sank into the Depression, and how company towns organized the lives of an entire workforce.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W.T. Jarman
Related events
- · Discovery of the Van oil field
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jordans Saline
Grand Saline, TX
When John Jordan settled in this corner of East Texas in 1844, he and partner A.T. McGee tapped the region's underground salt deposits to found Jordans Saline. Salt was a frontier necessity—for preserving meat, tanning hides, and trade—and the little town thrived on it, even serving briefly as Van Zandt County's first seat. But when the Texas & Pacific Railroad laid its tracks a mile to the north in 1873, the whole community picked up and moved to the rails, reincorporating as Grand Saline. Jordans Saline simply faded away.
Railroads in Mineola
Mineola, TX
Mineola owes its very existence to a railroad race: in the summer of 1873 the Houston and Great Northern and the Texas and Pacific drove crews day and night toward a single crossing point, arriving so close together that the two lines could see each other and still argue over who won. The junction town incorporated in 1877, gained a third railroad in 1881, and became a bustling shipping point for watermelons, sweet potatoes and cotton. When the T&P moved its terminal here in 1929, some 200 rail jobs helped carry Mineola through the Great Depression while neighboring towns struggled.
First United Methodist Church of Gladewater
Gladewater, TX
Gladewater grew slowly as a railroad town from the 1870s until, in 1922, fourteen people led by the Rev. H.T. Perritte gathered in a family home to organize a Methodist congregation and soon built a one-room sanctuary. Everything changed in the 1930s, when the East Texas oil boom flooded the town with new residents and swelled the church alongside it. Its members went on to form the men's and women's groups that carried the congregation's many programs forward.
The I&GN Railroad in Palestine
Palestine, TX
Named the Anderson County seat in 1846, Palestine first grew on Trinity River steamboat trade that stalled whenever low water forced residents back onto ox-drawn wagons. Local leaders courted the railroad, and when the line that became the International and Great Northern arrived in 1872 — soon relocating its headquarters, shops, and roundhouse here — it became the town's largest employer for decades. Recruited workers arrived from across the nation and abroad, and to spare the old courthouse square the noise of trains the line was routed west, spawning a separate 'New Town' that took years to blend with the old.