Site of Wichita Valley Refinery and Texas Oklahoma Fair
Iowa Park, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Wichita County's first oil refinery was built in 1914 at Iowa Park by the Wichita Valley Refining Company. Established on a small scale, the company soon expanded and by 1918 owned 53 tank cars, had 12 miles of pipeline, and was producing 2,500 barrels of crude oil daily. The operation was sold in 1919 to Texhoma Refining Company. In 1922 the company was succeeded by the Walker Consolidated Producing and Refining Company, which improved plant and pipeline operations. Although functioning only until about 1926, the refinery was significant in the county's petroleum industry history. The Wichita County fair, which began in Wichita Falls in 1922, moved to this Iowa Park site in 1928. Promoted by the local newspaper publisher, the county fair became a popular annual event featuring agriculture, livestock, and industry of the Northwest Texas and Southern Oklahoma region. The six-day festival became the Texas-Oklahoma Fair and Southwest Oil Exposition. The fair closed in 1962 due to declining attendance and revenue and fires that destroyed several buildings. The property was later developed into a retail center. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Wichita County's first oil refinery rose here at Iowa Park in 1914 and grew fast, running dozens of tank cars and miles of pipeline and processing 2,500 barrels of crude a day by 1918 before changing hands and closing about 1926. In 1928 the county fair moved to this same site, blossoming into the six-day Texas-Oklahoma Fair and Southwest Oil Exposition that celebrated the region's farms, livestock, and booming petroleum trade until it closed in 1962. The grounds later became a retail center.
Why it matters
The site captures the North Texas oil boom that transformed the region's economy, and the fairs that turned petroleum and agriculture into a shared civic spectacle.
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Related events
- · Texas-Oklahoma Fair and Southwest Oil Exposition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Iowa Park
Iowa Park, TX
Iowa Park was one of countless towns that leapt up ahead of the rails crossing Texas in the 1800s, born in 1885 as "Daggett's Switch" on the Fort Worth and Denver City line. Union Pacific builder Gen. G. M. Dodge promoted the townsite, and land agents recruited Midwesterners — many from Iowa — laying out a plat full of parks in 1888. Two decades of farm prosperity gave way to frenzy in 1918 when oil was struck nearby, sending speculators and land prices soaring until the boom burned out by 1925 and a steady farm economy returned.
Site of Valley View School
Kamay, TX
Valley View School grew out of two 1897 country schools that merged in 1918, just as the 1918 discovery of the Kemp-Munger-Allen oil field and new irrigation lakes flooded rural Wichita County with families. Enrollment swelled to nearly 600 by the late 1930s, and the district built and rebuilt to keep pace. As farm mechanization and the oil industry's decline thinned the population, the district consolidated with Iowa Park in 1970 and its buildings were eventually dismantled.
Kell, Frank
Wichita Falls, TX
Frank Kell came to Wichita Falls in 1896, following his brother-in-law Joseph Kemp, and together the two men steered the region through decades of explosive growth. Beginning with the Wichita Mill and Elevator Company, Kell chartered railroads to reach north Texas wheat, coal, and oil, built downtown warehouses and banks, and sold his milling empire to General Mills in 1928 while serving thirteen years as a Dallas Federal Reserve director.
Kemp, Joseph Alexander
Wichita Falls, TX
Joseph Alexander Kemp, who opened his first store at eighteen, moved to Wichita Falls in 1883 and spent his life building the young town into a commercial city. He helped charter rail lines, platted new neighborhoods, erected banks, hotels, and a library, and — most consequentially — privately financed Lake Wichita in 1901 and later Lakes Kemp and Diversion to give the arid region a dependable water supply.