Site of Odessa College
Odessa, Ector County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established through efforts of Odessa Townsite Co., which gave $12,000; a northern methodist group matched this fund in 1888. Rev. M. A. Daugherty, Pittsburgh, Pa., was placed in charge, and a 20-acre plot was allowed to the college. Erection of a 2-story building began in 1890. In 1891 classes for 14 students were taught by Miss Alice Wright, of Maine. A "Mystery" fire destroyed the college after one session. This church-sponsored college was never rebuilt. In 1946, the new Odessa college was founded to fulfill aims of leadership in education. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the boom optimism of the late 1880s, Odessa's townsite promoters and a northern Methodist group each pledged funds to plant a college on the raw West Texas plains. A two-story building rose in 1890, and in 1891 fourteen students studied under a single teacher from Maine before a "mystery" fire destroyed the school after one session, and it was never rebuilt. Not until 1946 would a new Odessa College finally realize the original ambition.
Why it matters
The vanished college embodies the fragile educational dreams that boosters attached to frontier railroad towns—and how often fire, distance, and thin resources undid them.
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Related people
- · M. A. Daugherty
- · Alice Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mrs. John L. Morris (Marjorie)
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An English professor at Odessa College, Marjorie Morris was the driving force behind the Globe of the Great Southwest, a remarkably faithful replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre built in West Texas. Named her college's Teacher of the Year in 1961 and honored the same year among the state's outstanding college teachers, she also founded the Permian Basin Museum and the area's "Writers' Roundup" contest. She was recognized in the Outstanding Women of Texas series in 1967.
W.T. Barrett Stadium
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Built of steel and wood in 1948, W.T. Barrett Stadium rose after Odessa High School's 1946 state football championship, its stands designed to hold more than 17,000 fans. Nicknamed 'W.T.,' the arena packed in crowds nearing 20,000 for football, marching-band contests, and, after a cinder track was added in 1950, track meets that sent competitors on to the U.S. Olympic team. For more than three decades it was the largest stadium between Abilene and El Paso and a beating heart of West Texas community life until it was sold and moved to Leander in 1983.
Site of Blackshear High School
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As oil-boom Odessa grew through the early 20th century, its African American children were long confined to a single one-room school opened in 1932, where Ella Sayles taught the first class of eight. Demand steadily outstripped the cramped quarters until, in 1948, a proper campus for Blackshear High School opened on this site, named for the pioneering Texas Black educator Edward Lavoisier Blackshear. When the district integrated in 1966 the building became a middle school, and it later served as a magnet elementary.
Ector High School
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The 1926 oil strike in Ector County flooded Odessa with workers and their children, and by the mid-1950s the school district needed a new high school on the city's south side. Opened in 1957 and named for Confederate general and Texas legislator Mathew Ector, the school served a student body that was predominantly Hispanic and African American. Its history became entangled in the long fight over desegregation, and rather than fully integrate, the district closed it as a high school after MALDEF's 1981 legal action.