Site of Tuckertown
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Oil was discovered in Corsicana on June 19, 1894, during the drilling of a water well, setting off the oil boom in Texas. In the ensuing years, oil developers, lease hounds, rough-necks, businessmen, bootleggers, prostitutes, gamblers and other adventurers rushed to Corsicana and the rich fields to the southeast. A number of small boomtowns sprang up after oil was discovered in the Powell field around this site. Tuckertown was the largest of the oil boomtowns in this area. Percy T. Fullwood (1891-1958) of Corsicana had a small grocery on land leased from Corsicana attorney William J. Mckie, who drafted the charter for the Texas Company (Texaco) in 1902. Fullwood and Harry L. Tucker, a town site promoter, formed a partnership in 1923. They sold lots around the store on both sides of the gravel road to Beaumont (now Farm-to-Market Road 637.) Within two months, 3,000 people were living in the tents, houses and shanties of Tuckertown. It exemplified the freewheeling, often unruly life of the Navarro County oil boomtowns. In October 1923 a fire burned most of the north side of town, but the residents rebuilt. In November, the Powell field was completely drilled, and no new digging could be done. Another fire in February 1924 did further damage to Tuckertown. The field continued to decline, and by 1931 most structures in Tuckertown had been torn down. The last grocery store, located in what was once a house, was converted to a barn in 1935. Tuckertown was the center of the earliest and largest oil production in Powell field, which produced about 186,000,000 barrels of oil. By the end of the 20th century, its location was obscured by pasture. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When oil gushed from a Corsicana water well in 1894, it launched the Texas oil boom, and boomtowns soon sprang up over the rich Powell field to the southeast. Tuckertown, the largest, exploded from a single grocery into a settlement of 3,000 people in tents and shanties within two months of its 1923 founding—a freewheeling mix of roughnecks, businessmen, gamblers, and bootleggers. Fires, the field's rapid depletion, and the end of new drilling emptied it just as fast, and by 1931 most of the town was gone, its site later lost beneath pasture.
Why it matters
Tuckertown is the classic American oil boomtown—born overnight, wild and unruly, and vanished within a decade—capturing the volatile birth of the petroleum industry that transformed Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
On June 19, 1894, a crew drilling for water in Corsicana struck oil instead — and Texas was never the same. That accidental well is widely remembered as the spark of the modern Texas oil industry, the first commercially important field in a state that would come to define American petroleum. Corsicana learned, ahead of everyone else, what it meant to sit on top of oil.
The country around it changed character almost overnight. Where there had been farmland, there were now derricks, and where there had been a settled county-seat rhythm, there was the churning, opportunistic energy of a boom. The marker's own roll call captures the human tide: oil developers and lease hounds, roughnecks and businessmen, and right alongside them the bootleggers, gamblers, and prostitutes who followed money wherever it gushed. This was the Gilded Age tipping into the twentieth century, and the oil field was its rawest frontier.
The richest of the nearby strikes lay in the Powell field to the southeast, and it was there, on this ground, that the boomtowns bloomed. Oil did not build gradually here. It arrived, and the towns arrived with it.
People & events
Tuckertown began, improbably, with a grocery store. Percy T. Fullwood, a Corsicana man, kept a small grocery on land leased from a Corsicana attorney named William J. McKie — himself a figure with a claim on history, for McKie had drafted the 1902 charter of the Texas Company, the firm the world would come to know as Texaco. In 1923 Fullwood joined forces with Harry L. Tucker, a townsite promoter, and the two began selling lots on both sides of the gravel road toward Beaumont.
What happened next is the boom in miniature. Within two months, three thousand people were living in the tents, houses, and shanties of Tuckertown — a full-blown settlement conjured from a store and a road in a matter of weeks. It was, the marker says, the largest of the area's oil boomtowns and a fair exemplar of their freewheeling, unruly life.
Then the same speed ran in reverse. In October 1923 a fire burned most of the north side of town; the residents rebuilt. In November the Powell field was declared completely drilled — no new wells could be sunk. A second fire in February 1924 did further damage. With the field in decline and no new drilling to feed it, Tuckertown drained away. By 1931 most of its structures had been torn down, and in 1935 the last grocery, by then housed in a converted home, became a barn.
Its place in the American story
Tuckertown is the American oil boomtown distilled to its essence — born overnight, wild while it lasted, and gone within a decade. That pattern repeated across the country wherever oil was found, from the Pennsylvania fields of the nineteenth century to the great Texas and Oklahoma booms of the early twentieth, and Tuckertown shows every stage of it at once.
The deeper significance lies in what the boom was feeding. The Powell field around this site ultimately produced roughly 186 million barrels of oil — an enormous contribution to an industry that was, in these very years, remaking American life. The automobile age was arriving, and it ran on exactly this. The chaos of a place like Tuckertown was the messy human face of a transformation that would put the nation on wheels.
And Corsicana's role in that story is foundational. The 1894 discovery that launched these boomtowns also helped launch Texas oil itself, including the company McKie chartered that grew into Texaco. The gamblers and roughnecks came and went; the industry they served became one of the largest in the world.
If you visit
Come here for one of the strangest pleasures a historic site can offer: standing in an empty field and knowing that three thousand people once crowded the ground beneath your feet. By the end of the twentieth century Tuckertown's location had been swallowed by pasture, so what you'll find is quiet grazing land where a roaring boomtown briefly stood. The marker is the memory the landscape itself no longer keeps.
Let that contrast do its work. Picture the gravel road — now Farm-to-Market Road 637 — lined on both sides with the lots Fullwood and Tucker sold, the tents and shanties thrown up in a matter of weeks, the two fires, the rebuilding, the sudden silence when the drilling stopped. Ghost towns are usually about absence, and few make the point as sharply as a boomtown erased back into grass.
This is a rewarding stop for anyone curious about how Texas became an oil state, and it pairs naturally with the wider Corsicana story just up the road, where the 1894 discovery began it all. Don't expect ruins or a skyline. Expect open country, a good marker, and the peculiar power of imagining a vanished crowd.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Percy T. Fullwood
- · Harry L. Tucker
- · William J. McKie
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Powell Oil Field
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