Iraan, Texas

Ira Griffith Yates, Jr., rancher and early owner of the Yates oilfield , the son of Martha E. (Voss) and Ira Griffith Yates, Sr., was born in Hopkins County, Texas, on October 29, 1859. After Ira, Sr., was killed in Lamar County in 1865, Martha Yates moved with her six children to Wilson County. When she died in 1871 or 1872, her children were left to fend for themselves. Ira, Jr., was twelve or thirteen years old when his mother died, but he had already been working with his brothers digging peanuts since he was eleven. After their mother's death, Ira and his brothers signed on as cowboys, working for a Mr. J. Thompson. The Thompson family's governess taught him how to read and write when he was fourteen. When he was nineteen Yates began buying cattle and horses and driving them to market in San Antonio. He was working as a cowhand for J. N. Upton when he married Anna Shockley Brooks, the daughter of a Methodist minister, in Karnes County on January 26, 1883. Not long after his marriage Yates traveled to the area of Tom Green County, in search of a lost brother reported seen along the Concho River. Impressed by the abundant grass and water he found there, he returned to the Upton ranch and convinced Upton to send him and his family to the area with a herd of cattle. Later, he bought a spread of his own near the town of Crow's Nest. Over the next twenty years Yates threw himself into a variety of businesses and occupations in Tom Green, Crockett, and Upton counties. During the 1890s he ran a ranch for John Nasworthy and went into business with him in a combined butcher shop and livery; in 1899 Yates served a term as city marshal of San Angelo and that same year bought a ranch in Lipan Flat. After that venture, he worked for the National Livestock Commission Company and did some independent trading on the side. In 1911, in partnership with Louis L. Farr , Yates bought a ranch in Crockett County. About 1913, while still living on that ranch, he paid 216 cattle (valued at fifty dollars per head) for a failing dry-goods store in Rankin, despite the advice of friends who warned him against the venture. By 1915 Yates's store was doing $5,000 worth of business per month, a "pretty durn good" performance considering the area's sparse population. The store's profit-making potential attracted the attention of Thomas Hickox, a Pecos County rancher and businessman who was looking to unload his 16,640-acre River Ranch in Pecos County. The property was unfenced and plagued by disputed boundaries, frequent droughts, and "greasy" well water. In early 1915 Hickox proposed to trade the River Ranch to Yates for the store. Friends such as Nub Pulliam, who had once owned the property, warned him against the deal, saying that "even buffalo know better than to cross the Pecos-that a crow would not fly over it, and it was not worth the taxes." He made the trade anyway. As his granddaughter, Mrs. Estelle Holmes, later explained, Yates "didn't know beans about groceries," but he did know ranching and was anxious to own such a large parcel of land. Under the terms of the deal consummated on June 1, 1915, Yates agreed to pay an additional $16,559 over the next three years to pay off the existing mortgage on the land and to cover charges to the state's Permanent School Fund . Soon afterward he bought even more land, including a 3,600-acre vacancy (a strip of land unaccounted for during the original surveys) that ran through the middle of the property. In the 1920s the Yates Ranch was still struggling to make a profit when Ira approached Levi Smith of the Transcontinental Oil Company in San Angelo and convinced him to drill on his ranch despite its location. Although oil had been found in West Texas, experts did not believe that there was any west of the Pecos River. Sharing the lease with Transcontinental, Ohio Oil (which became Marathon Oil) drilled four wells on Yates's ranch before they struck oil on October 28, 1926. Yates became an instant millionair

One of the largest US oil fields. Discovery well Yates No. 1-A blew in Oct 28, 1926 (Mid Kansas Oil + Transcontinental Oil, San Andres formation ~1,000 ft down). In 1929, Yates No. 30-A set single-well world record at 204,672 bbl/day. 1928 proration by Texas Railroad Commission was first complete proration of an oil field in state history. Cumulative 1.5+ billion bbl since discovery; ~23,300 bbl/day current. Operators: Marathon (1962-2003), Kinder Morgan (2003-present).

Wayland Seals, an oil field pipefitter and musician, was born Eugene Wayland Seals on January 20, 1912, in Big Sandy, Benton County, Tennessee. He was the only child of Fred Seals and Cora Eunice (Elliott) Seals. In 1919 Fred Seals moved his family to Eastland County, Texas, “because there was work in the oil fields.” Both Ranger and Desdemona were awash with crude. Fred Seals found employment as a pump manager or pumper (a pumper’s duties included operating and maintaining the oil well pumps on a company’s lease). Wayland eventually followed his father into the oil patch life. During World War II , he served as a warrant officer in the United States Army. Upon discharge, Seals headed to West Texas and settled near Iraan in Pecos County, where he took a job as a pipefitter for the Shell Oil Company in the prolific Yates Field . He remained in the area, living primarily in Rankin, for the rest of his life. Music was ever-present in the Fred Seals household. Fred played banjo, and he taught his son the basic guitar chords. Wayland in turn passed his musical interests on to his sons. Eddie Ray Seals was born in Gorman (Eastland County) in 1934 to Clodell Lucille (Ellison) Seals; James Eugene Seals was born in Sidney (Comanche County) in 1941; and Danny Wayland Seals was born in McCamey (Upton County) in 1948 to Susan Louella (Taylor) Seals. Jimmy won the Texas State Fiddle Championship in 1952, and he later joined Dean Beard ’s band, the Crew Cats, on tenor sax before signing on with the Champs (of “Tequila” fame), eventually partnering with Dash Crofts in the highly popular duo Seals and Crofts. Dan rose to fame as ‘England Dan” of England Dan and John Ford Coley, then branched out on his own as a successful country music singer. Wayland Seals’s day job in the oil field did not interfere with his own musical ambitions. He earned the reputation as a topnotch guitar picker, and he worked with Tex Collins and the Tom Cats, while also fronting the Oil Patch Boys and the Seals Family Band, which featured a four-year-old Danny on doghouse bass. Wayland also served as the opening act for nationally-known performers such as Ernest Tubb and Bob Wills when they toured the area. Seals made his initial recordings in 1957 for Slim Willet ’s Winston Records . “When I’m Gone,” backed with “I’ll Walk Out” (Winston 1016) by Wayland Seals and the Oil Patch Boys, is dominated by Wayland’s driving flattop guitar styling on a six-string Gibson J-200 model that his father had given him. “When I’m Gone” is highly prized by rockabilly aficionados. Even more elusive is Seals’s second Winston single, “Oil Patch Blues”/“I’ll Be Happy” (Winston 1024). Recorded the next year in 1958, “Oil Patch Blues” features members of Dean Beard’s Crew Cats with Jimmy Seals on a honking, wailing tenor sax and the elder Seals exhorting, “I’m telling you, baby, they’re rocking to the ‘Oil Patch Blues.’” The petroleum industry in the Permian Basin was booming, and “Oil Patch Blues” captures a sense of the optimism and excitement of the period. Although he waxed only the two Winston 45s, Wayland Seals is yet another example of an oil field worker who created commercially-recorded musical narratives that speak to life in the oil patch, a fact still often ignored by folklorists and music historians. Seals died on May 17, 1992, and he is buried in Restland Cemetery in Iraan.

Iraan was planned and built by Ohio Oil Company to house Yates field workers. Initial boom settlement 'Red Barn' (tents/shacks) sprang up near the Oct 28 1926 discovery well. April 1927: Ira Yates hired surveyor H.L. George of San Angelo to lay out a proper townsite 3 miles north. Name chosen via contest with town lot as prize. Ohio Oil built company houses, drilled water wells, provided school + teachers. Post office 1928. By 1930: 60 businesses, ~1,600 population.

Opening one of greatest oil fields in the world, Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company (a subsidiary wholly owned by the Ohio Oil Company, whose name has now been changed to Marathon Oil Company) brought in the I. G. Yates "A" No. 1 well on October 29, 1926. The well at the shallow depth of 1,150 feet had a rated potential daily flow of 72,869 barrels. Previously oil men had said: "You won't find any oil west of the Pecos." This did not stop the work of Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company and its partner, Transcontinental Oil Company, later acquired by Marathon Oil Company. The strike was sensational. Scarcely more than a year later, the Yates field had 100 wells--two of which had higher yields than Yates No. 1. Under the 20,000-acres Ira G. Yates ranch and adjoining lands lay one of the largest oil reserves in the world. The many developers voluntarily adopted proration. Their plans for allocating and restricting Yates fields production were approved by the Texas Railroad Commission in 1928. This was the first complete commission in 1928. This was the first complete proration of an oil field in the state --and an important milestone in petroleum conservation. The Yates field now has 607 wells.