Slaton Well
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Plainview Commercial Club, led by President J. O. Wyckoff, saw the potential of irrigation during a 1910 visit to wells in New Mexico. Local banker and farmer J. H. Slaton agreed to bear cost of a test well sunk on his land if it succeeded. G. E. Green and J. N. McNaughton completed the well in Jan. 1911. At 130 feet, using a nine-inch centrifugal pump, it yielded 1,700 gallons of water a minute. The success of the Slaton Well led to extensive irrigation. It transformed this semiarid area of West Texas into one of the most productive food crop regions in the world. (1976)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After Plainview boosters saw irrigated wells in New Mexico in 1910, banker-farmer J. H. Slaton agreed to fund a test well on his land if it worked. Completed in January 1911, it drew 1,700 gallons a minute from just 130 feet—proof that the Ogallala water beneath the plains could be tapped.
Why it matters
The Slaton Well launched the irrigation revolution that turned the semiarid High Plains of West Texas into one of the most productive farming regions on earth.
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Related people
- · J. H. Slaton
- · J. O. Wyckoff
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Green Machinery Co., Inc.
Plainview, TX
George Emmett Green came to Plainview from Missouri in 1909, bringing a gift for machinery and years of experience in pump factories. In 1911 he drilled Hale County's test irrigation well, striking a commercial flow of 1,400 gallons a minute and proving that the fertile but dry South Plains could be farmed at scale. Four years later he invented the hollow-shaft, right-angle gear drive that let automotive engines power irrigation pumps, and built a factory to make affordable pumps that ordinary farmers could buy.
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Site of Lake Plainview
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On the arid High Plains, water was everything, and Plainview's civic leaders staked the town's future on finding it underground. In 1911 they bored the region's first deep wells, and the next year the Texas Land & Development Co. sank a demonstration well that filled Lake Plainview—billed as the largest body of water in Texas fed by a well. Popular but costly, the lake reverted to nature after a 1917 fire destroyed its pump house.