The Little House on the Corner
McCamey, Upton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1940-1941, on site furnished by independent school district, to house McCamey Girl Scout troops. First stone veneer structure in McCamey. Girl Scouts' prized rock collections, plus stone hauled from Bobcat Hill by oil firm trucks and others used in walls. Balcony woodwork is cedar from nearby canyons. The entire town worked in a united effort to obtain materials, erect house. Setting for many "cook-outs" and overnight camps for Girl Scouts. Also served as social center for McCamey 1941-1959. An extension was built in 1964. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1940–41 on land the school district provided, this was McCamey's first stone-veneer building, raised to house the town's Girl Scout troops. The whole community pitched in—oil-company trucks hauled stone from Bobcat Hill, the Scouts contributed their prized rock collections, and cedar from nearby canyons became the balcony woodwork. For years it hosted Scout cook-outs and campouts and served as McCamey's social center.
Why it matters
The little house shows how a West Texas oil town rallied around its girls, and how the early Girl Scout movement wove itself into the civic life of small-town America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the little stone house went up in 1940 and 1941, McCamey was still a young town. It had sprung up in the Permian Basin oil boom of the 1920s, one of many West Texas settlements that went from open ranchland to a crowded oil camp almost overnight. By the end of the 1930s the Great Depression had worn the region down, and oil towns like this one had learned to get by on what they had and on each other.
Nationally, the Girl Scout movement was coming of age. Juliette Gordon Low had started it in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912. By the 1930s troops were meeting in church basements, school rooms, and borrowed parlors all over the country. A building of their own was a real prize for any troop, and a rare one for girls in a remote oil town.
The timing matters too. The house was finished just as the United States was being drawn into the Second World War. For most of the years it served as McCamey's social center, from 1941 to 1959, the town was living through the war and then the long postwar boom. Small communities across America needed gathering places badly in those years.
People & events
The marker doesn't give us one founder's name, and that is the point. It credits the whole town. The school district gave the land, and from there almost everyone seems to have joined in. Oil company trucks, which normally hauled pipe and equipment across the oil patch, carried stone in from Bobcat Hill. Other people brought whatever rock they could.
The most touching detail is the Girl Scouts' own contribution. The girls gave up their prized rock collections to go into the walls. Picture a child handing over a treasured agate or fossil and knowing it would become part of a building she could visit for years. The finished house was McCamey's first stone veneer structure, and its balcony woodwork was cut from cedar grown in the nearby canyons.
Once it was built, the house filled up. Scouts held cook-outs and overnight camps there. For almost two decades it was also where the wider town gathered socially. An extension was added in 1964, which shows it was still valued a generation later. In 1967 it became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The Little House on the Corner is a small building with a big American theme. In the first half of the twentieth century, towns across the country put up their own community buildings with volunteer labor and donated materials. The effort itself often mattered as much as the result. Here a boomtown of oil workers and their families put that civic spirit into something built for its girls.
It also marks a moment in women's history. Scouting gave girls of that era outdoor skills, leadership experience, and a place of their own at a time when many public spaces were built mainly for men and boys. A town choosing to build its first stone building for a Girl Scout troop tells you something about what that community valued.
Finally, it's a reminder that the oil industry built more than derricks. The same trucks and companies that drove the Permian Basin economy also helped build the social life of the towns that grew up around the wells.
If you visit
Look closely at the walls. The stones are the story here. Remember that some of them came out of children's rock collections and others were hauled from Bobcat Hill. Rough, mixed stonework like this rewards a slow look. Then look up at the balcony and its cedar woodwork, cut from the canyons of this corner of West Texas.
McCamey is a small town in wide, open oil country, and the house fits that setting. It's modest, homemade, and clearly loved. Try to picture the smoke of a Scout cook-out, or a crowded social evening in the war years, when this was where the town came together.
If you're driving across the Permian Basin, McCamey makes a good stop between the larger oil cities. It's a chance to see the human side of a boom region. Please respect the building and anyone using it, and check locally before you assume the interior is open.
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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Themes & tags
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