Site of J.H. McCleskey No. 1, Discovery Well of the Ranger Oil Boom
Ranger, Eastland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Texas and Pacific Coal Company struck oil at 1,000 feet about 10 miles east of Ranger in 1915. This event raised the hopes of area ranchers, farmers, and businessmen struggling to survive an economic slump brought on by severe drought and boll weevil-ravaged cotton fields. Oil expectations mounted then subsided when subsequent test-drillings turned up dry holes. Desperate local leaders sought out Texas and Pacific Coal Company general manager William Knox Gordon in nearby Thurber to help them continue the search for oil. Contrary to the conclusions of some geologists, Gordon believed oil lay much deeper within the earth than the depths reached by previous test drillings. Gordon agreed to drill to a depth of 3,500 feet and on July 2, 1917, contractor Warren Wagner began drilling here on J.H. McCleskey's farm. On October 17, 1917, at a depth of 3,432 feet, McCleskey Well No. 1 hit pay sand and roared in with an estimated daily flow of 1,600 barrels of oil. The well was plugged on May 18, 1920. J.H. McCleskey Well No. 1 sparked the much-heralded, wild, and prolific Ranger oil boom that gained Ranger international fame as the town whose oil wiped out critical oil shortages during World War I, allowing the Allies to "float to victory on a wave of oil." (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1917 area farmers and ranchers were reeling from drought and boll weevils when Texas and Pacific Coal Company manager William Knox Gordon bet that oil lay far deeper than earlier dry holes had reached. Contractor Warren Wagner drilled here on J. H. McCleskey's farm, and on October 17, 1917, at 3,432 feet the well roared in at an estimated 1,600 barrels a day. It ignited the wild, prolific Ranger boom, whose oil helped relieve wartime shortages and let the Allies, as the saying went, 'float to victory on a wave of oil.'
Why it matters
The Ranger gusher helped fuel the Allied victory in World War I and announced the North Texas oil boom that reshaped the state's economy.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before 1917, this stretch of North Texas was a hard place to make a living. Ranchers, farmers, and merchants around Ranger were caught in a slow-motion crisis: a punishing drought had dried out the range, and the boll weevil was chewing its way through the cotton that many families depended on for cash. When money is that tight, people start looking underground for a way out.
Oil was already changing Texas by then. The gusher at Spindletop near Beaumont in 1901 had shown the whole country what a single well could do, and prospectors and companies had been chasing that promise across the state ever since. So when the Texas and Pacific Coal Company hit oil at a shallow depth east of Ranger in 1915, local hopes shot up.
Then they crashed. The follow-up wells came up dry, and the geology seemed to shrug off the early excitement. That is the moment this marker really captures: a struggling community that had glimpsed salvation and then watched it slip away, unwilling to give up on it.
People & events
The turning point came when desperate local leaders went looking for William Knox Gordon, the general manager of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company over in the company town of Thurber. Gordon had a conviction that set him apart from some of the geologists of the day: he believed the oil lay far deeper than anyone had yet drilled. It was a gamble, and he was willing to take it.
Gordon agreed to push a well down to 3,500 feet, a serious depth for the era. On July 2, 1917, contractor Warren Wagner set up his rig on J. H. McCleskey's farm and began boring into the earth. For more than three months the crew drilled on, farther and farther below the range where the earlier dry holes had quit.
On October 17, 1917, at 3,432 feet, the McCleskey No. 1 hit pay sand and roared in at an estimated 1,600 barrels a day. The bet had paid off spectacularly. The well itself would be plugged in 1920, its work done — but the boom it touched off had already remade the town, its name attached forever to the discovery that started it all.
Its place in the American story
The timing of this well is what lifts it out of local history and into the national story. It came in during 1917, the year the United States entered World War I, when the machines of modern war — trucks, ships, and aircraft — ran on oil, and the Allies needed every barrel they could find.
Ranger became famous for helping meet that need. The line that its oil let the Allies "float to victory on a wave of oil" became a rallying phrase, and it points to a real shift: petroleum had become a strategic resource, as decisive to a war effort as steel or grain. A gusher on a Texas farm suddenly mattered to armies an ocean away.
The well also announced the great North Texas oil boom, part of the larger transformation that turned Texas from a ranching and cotton state into one of the engines of the American economy. Boomtowns rose almost overnight, fortunes were made and lost, and the state's future tilted toward petroleum — a change whose effects are still visible across Texas today.
If you visit
Stand at this spot and the first thing to do is picture the contrast. The marker sits on what was ordinary farmland, the kind of quiet rural ground that gives no hint of the frantic, mud-and-derrick chaos that once erupted here. The drama is in the story, not the skyline, so let the inscription do its work as you look out over the land.
Think about depth as you read. Earlier wells quit far short of the mark; the difference between failure and a gusher was a few thousand more feet of stubborn drilling. That single decision — to go deeper — is the whole tale, and it is worth a moment of imagination as you stand where Wagner's rig once turned.
Ranger makes a natural stop on a road trip through North Texas oil country, a region dotted with markers to the boom era. Come for the history and stay for the sense of scale: a struggling farm town, a manager's hunch, and a war half a world away, all meeting on one patch of Eastland County ground.
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
- · William Knox Gordon
- · J. H. McCleskey
- · Warren Wagner
Related events
- · Ranger oil boom
- · World War I
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Roaring Ranger
Ranger, TX
When World War I drove oil demand sky-high, Texas Pacific Coal Company manager W.K. Gordon gambled on deep drilling, and in October 1917 the McClesky No. 1 blew in as a 1,700-barrel-a-day gusher a mile south of here. Later wells yielded many thousands of barrels daily, and a village of a dozen houses exploded into a boomtown so crowded that beds were shared in shifts and stuffed chairs were rented for sleeping. Amid a two-year sea of mud, easy money drew both fortune-seekers and vice, until lawmen cracked down after five murders in a single day.
First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County
Ranger, TX
On a Texas afternoon in the fall of 1917, the McCleskey No. 1 came in gushing, and the sleepy town of Ranger was never the same. Drilled through that summer and autumn under the eye of W.K. Gordon of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, the well opened the Ranger Pool and touched off one of the great oil booms of the World War I era. It flowed for thirteen years before being capped, having produced hundreds of thousands of barrels.
Merriman Cemetery
Ranger, TX
Begun around 1873 as a community graveyard just as Eastland County was organized, this cemetery holds early settlers, flu victims from the 1916–17 epidemic, and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Korea. The 1917 oil strike on nearby land triggered a boom, and speculators reportedly offered a large sum to lease the burial ground for drilling—an offer the local congregation refused, preserving the site's sanctity.
Merriman Baptist Church
Ranger vicinity, TX
Local Baptists met in private homes for years before organizing the Merriman Baptist Church in 1892 and raising a small frame meeting house. When an oil boom struck in 1917, the congregation leased its drilling rights, and a gusher soon earned the church hundreds of dollars a day. Keeping only what it needed to operate, the small congregation gave roughly $100,000 a year to missions, orphanages, seminaries, and charities. Drilling noise eventually drove services to a tabernacle, and in 1922 the members built a brick sanctuary they still used generations later.