T&P No. 1 - W.H. Abrams No. 1 Discovery Well of the Permian Basin

🏛️The era

In 1920, West Texas was ranch and railroad country, a dry and sparsely settled land with huge tracts owned by the Texas and Pacific railroad's land trust. Texas already knew oil well: the Spindletop gusher near Beaumont in 1901 had launched the state's great oil age, and new fields had opened across the state in the years since.

But the vast region of West Texas that would become known as the Permian Basin was still largely untested. Drillers and geologists were hunting for the next big strike, and the years right after the First World War brought a surge of demand for oil as automobiles, trucks, and industry multiplied.

It was against this backdrop that a well near Westbrook in Mitchell County found oil in commercial quantities, the first discovery well in what would become one of the most important oil regions in the country.

👥People & events

The well carried the name of W. H. Abrams, a leasing agent for the Texas and Pacific Land Trust. It first produced oil in February 1920 from a shallow depth of 450 feet. That June, drillers found a better showing much deeper, between 2,345 and 2,410 feet.

Then came the big day. On July 16, 1920, the well was shot with nitroglycerin, a common and dangerous method of breaking up rock to free the oil. A crowd of 2,000 people gathered to watch, and they got a show: oil, gas, water, and smoke burst from the well almost to the top of the derrick. For a young, dusty community, it must have felt like the future had arrived.

The well soon flowed at 129 barrels a day before settling down to about 20. From this well and another nearby, the Rio Grande Oil Company laid the first commercial oil pipeline in the Permian Basin, sending its first load of oil on April 3, 1922.

The story did not end there. On May 1, 1968, the well was renamed Westbrook Southeast Unit No. 701, part of a project using water flooding to push more oil out of the ground. That technique produced 67 million of the more than 100 million barrels recovered from the Westbrook field.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

This is where the Permian Basin's commercial oil story began. The basin would go on to become, as the marker notes, home to 56 major fields and one of the top oil-producing areas in the country. Other famous strikes followed, including the celebrated Santa Rita No. 1 in Reagan County in 1923, but the Abrams well came first.

Oil from West Texas helped power twentieth-century America: cars, farms, factories, and the country's military efforts. It transformed ranching towns into boomtowns and reshaped the economy of Texas.

The well's later life tells an important story too. Water flooding, a secondary recovery method, showed how engineers could keep aging fields productive for decades. The Westbrook field's more than 100 million barrels put it among the major fields, a rare distinction.

🧭If you visit

The marker notes that the well site itself is about 2.4 miles north, so the marker is your storytelling stop rather than the well itself. Stand here and picture that July day in 1920: a crowd of 2,000 people, a wooden derrick, and a roar of oil and smoke into the West Texas sky.

Look around at the land. This is wide, open country, and you will likely see pumpjacks and other oilfield equipment on the horizon, a sign that the industry this well began is still very much alive.

Westbrook makes a meaningful stop for anyone crossing West Texas, especially travelers interested in the history of oil. Pair it with other oil heritage sites across the Permian Basin to follow the story from this first discovery to the boom that followed. Remember that oilfield sites are working, private land, so enjoy them from public roads.