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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, North Texas was cattle and wheat country, and then oil changed everything. Wichita County saw major discoveries around Electra in 1911. In 1918 came the famous boom at Burkburnett, which drew fortune seekers by the thousands and filled the landscape with derricks almost overnight.
Crude oil in the ground was only half the story. It had to be moved, stored and refined into products people could use. That meant pipelines, tank cars and refineries. It also meant jobs and investment for towns like Iowa Park, a farming community on the rail line west of Wichita Falls.
By the 1920s the region was proud of both its farms and its oil fields. Agricultural fairs had long been a fixture of American rural life. Here they took on a new dimension, showing off not just prize livestock and crops but also the petroleum industry that was remaking the local economy.
People & events
This site's first chapter opened in 1914, when the Wichita Valley Refining Company built Wichita County's first oil refinery here at Iowa Park. It started small but grew quickly as the oil boom gathered pace. By 1918 the company had 53 tank cars and 12 miles of pipeline, and it was handling 2,500 barrels of crude a day, a serious operation for a small-town enterprise.
Then came a string of ownership changes, typical of the fast-moving oil business. Texhoma Refining Company bought the plant in 1919. In 1922 the Walker Consolidated Producing and Refining Company took over and improved the plant and its pipelines. The refinery ran only until about 1926, but it earned its place as a milestone in the county's petroleum history.
The site's second life began in 1928. The Wichita County fair had started in Wichita Falls in 1922, and that year it moved to these grounds. Backed by the local newspaper publisher, it grew into a six-day festival called the Texas-Oklahoma Fair and Southwest Oil Exposition, drawing crowds from both sides of the Red River to see livestock, crops and industry. It ran for more than three decades. Falling attendance and revenue, along with fires that destroyed several buildings, finally closed it in 1962, and the land later became a retail center.
Its place in the American story
Early Texas oil booms helped turn the United States into a petroleum powerhouse in the twentieth century. Refineries like the one at Iowa Park were an essential link in that chain, turning raw crude into the fuel and products that powered cars, farms and factories across the country.
The fair tells a parallel national story. County and regional fairs were how rural Americans celebrated their work, compared notes and showed off progress. Adding an "Oil Exposition" to an agricultural fair reflects a moment when places like North Texas were learning to see themselves as both farm country and industrial country.
The fair's decline also fits a broader pattern. By the mid-twentieth century, cars, television and changing tastes in entertainment were pulling audiences away from many traditional fairs. Its 1962 closing, and the site's later life as a shopping center, trace the arc from boomtown industry to civic celebration to modern commerce.
If you visit
Don't expect storage tanks or a midway today. The site has been redeveloped for retail, and the marker is what keeps its memory alive. Half the fun is imagining the scene in layers: first tank cars and pipelines, then crowds, livestock barns and exhibits of the oil industry's latest machinery.
Iowa Park and nearby Wichita Falls make a good base for exploring North Texas oil country. As you drive the area, watch for pumpjacks still nodding in the fields. They show that the industry this refinery helped start never entirely left.
This marker works well on a road trip across the Red River region, especially paired with other oil boom history in Wichita County. It's a quick stop, but it tells a big story about how a farming town became part of the petroleum age.
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 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
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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.