Kermit, Texas

Native North Carolina. Start of Civil War, organized and took company 150 men to join Confederate army in Virginia. Unit made part 4th Texas Infantry of famed Hood's Brigade. Rose to command regiment as lt. colonel. Fought with famous unit in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee. Distinguished himself second Manassas, wounded at Gettysburg. Surrendered with General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. (1963)

Last wooden oil derrick in U.S. to retire from daily use. Drilled Moorhead No. 1 well on Chapman-McAlvane lease, Loving County. Has bull wheels and rig irons of type not made since 1920s. However, in its day it made deep drilling possible. Pump was steam-driven until 1942, when 4-cylinder gasoline engine began to run the "Yo-Yo" wheels and walking beam. Well was put on electric pump, 1966. Given by R. O. Moorhead to city of Kermit, as a Permian Basin oil empire history exhibit, rig was moved 35 miles to this site without being dismantled. (1966)

First post office in Winkler (then part of Tom Green) County opened near here (1908) on John Howe ranch. Mail came in twice weekly to serve 300 persons. Duval townsite, promoted all over the United States by the Pueblo Investment Co., opened on March 19, 1910, with free lots, a picnic, and cowboy tournament. In April, Kermit became seat of Winkler County; post office moved there in October. Duval failed to develop and townsite rights were canceled after 1928 oil discovery here. Ownership of many valuable lots sold in 1910 is still unclear today. (1968)

Hendrick oilfield, in central Winkler County, was discovered by random drilling on July 16, 1926, when Hendrick No. 1, operated by Westbrook and Company, reached a depth of 3,006 feet in dolomitic limestone. The discovery well was the result of an oil-lease promotion by Roy Westbrook, a printer from Fort Worth, who had contracted with J. W. Grant, a Pennsylvania lease broker, in March 1925 to obtain leases in Winkler County. Grant took leases from Thomas G. and Ada Hendrick on their fifty-three-section ranch in Winkler County. The Hendricks conveyed mineral leases to Grant for ten cents an acre. A few days later, Grant sold more than 21,000 acres of the same leases to Westbrook for thirty-five cents an acre, thus making a good profit for himself. Eastland Oil Company drilled for Westbrook. Hendrick No. 1 was spudded on February 2, 1926, and drilling began on February 25. The well was connected to the outside world only by dirt roads no better than cattle trails. It was drilled with cable tools from a wooden derrick. Progress was slowed by the many water sands encountered and by the underreaming required. The top of the salt was reached at 1,930 feet. At 2,524 feet the drill encountered 250,000 cubic feet of gas, as oil filled 1,500 feet of the hole. After 400 barrels of oil was pumped from the hole, the well was dry. Drilling resumed, and at 3,006 feet crude oil began flowing by heads at the rate of 120 barrels a day. Controlling interest in the discovery well and a total of 1,440 acres of checkerboard leases were sold to Southern Crude Oil Purchasing Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company of Indiana, by Westbrook for $510,000 on November 22, 1926. Southern Crude became operator of the well and resumed drilling in late December, deepening the hole to 3,052 feet. Production increased to 390 barrels per day. Since the leases around the discovery well were highly sought, Westbrook easily sold a number of them to other oil companies. Marland, Humble, Gulf, Independent, Pure, Republic, California, Magnolia, Texon, Cranfill, Reynolds, Roxana, Amerada, and Atlantic bought leases in the area. With many new lease owners in the field, immediate and hurried development began. Southern Crude staked two offsets to the discovery well. Both wells came in with good production, but the real potential of the field was proved by Gulf Production Company and its Hendrick No. 1, brought in by the end of March 1927 at a depth of 2,836 feet; this well produced 397 barrels of oil daily. The well was deepened to 2,842 feet, and production increased to 2,000 barrels. Shortly after the Gulf completion, both Southern Crude and Independent Oil and Gas Company finished work on their offsets to the discovery well, with production near 350 barrels of oil a day from each well. During May 1927 Southern Crude brought in its 1C2 Hendrick, an offset to the independent producer. By the end of September 1927, production in the Hendrick field averaged 10,580 barrels of oil a day from nineteen wells drilled by six operators. A month later, the biggest producer completed to that date was brought in. Operated by Cranfill-Reynolds, it was the Ida Hendrick No.1, which gauged 500 barrels an hour from 2,883 feet. This well, located north of the Ida Hendrick lease of Southern Crude, increased total output of the field to 11,160 barrels daily and proved the productivity of much acreage in the field. Although the new large producers completed in the last half of 1927 proved Hendrick field a prolific area, they also brought a price decrease for the crude shipped from the field. A market for the flush production could be found only by cutting the price per barrel below the current market price of sixty cents. Flush production also presented crude transportation problems. In the early days of the field, operators constructed 55,000-barrel tanks to store their production in the field. By the end of 1927 the field was producing more than 50,000 barrels of oil daily without a

Winkler County is mostly in the Pecos Valley of West Texas; its northeastern section is on the Llano Estacado . The county is adjacent to the southeastern corner of New Mexico. Kermit, the county seat, is forty miles west of Odessa. The center of the county lies at 31°40' north latitude and 103°03' west longitude. Winkler County comprises 840 square miles of gently rolling to level terrain. Stretching diagonally across the central section of the county is a belt of sand dunes, which are active, windblown, and raised as much as thirty to forty feet above the surrounding surface. Soils are dark-brown to reddish-brown neutral sands, sandy loams, clay loams, and some shallow calcareous clay loams. The nearly flat surface of the county has insignificant drainage. Rainfall is collected in many large and small playas . Several small gullies head along Concho Bluff, a west-facing escarpment, which defines the edge of the Caprock . Two intermittent draws-Cheyenne and Monument-run through the central and west central areas of the county. Vegetation consists of grasses, scrub brush, creosotebush, cacti , and scattered mottes of willows and wild plums. Altitudes vary from 2,671 to 3,193 feet above sea level. Temperatures vary from average lows of 28° F in January to average highs of 97° in July. Average rainfall is twelve inches per year. The growing season extends 220 days. Large annual yields of oil and gas place the county among the leading petroleum producers in the state. The first people to live in the area of Winkler County were the Anasazi Indians, who migrated there about 900 and left their discarded pottery as evidence of their presence. At some later time, the Apaches etched a trail across the county from Monument Springs in New Mexico to Shafter Lake in the area of present Andrews County. After the Apaches, the Comanche Indians moved into the White Sandhills and Blue Mountain areas of the county territory, using them as meeting places from the seventeenth century until the 1870s. These Native Americans were attracted to the area by its water, which was readily available from the interdunal ponds or from digging to the shallow water table. The first military expeditions entered the area of present Winkler County in the last half of the nineteenth century. Capt. Randolph B. Marcy brought his soldiers into the area on September 25, 1849, as he searched for the best wagon route to California. Bvt. Capt. John Pope surveyed the thirty-second parallel, which separates Winkler County from New Mexico, for possible railroad construction in 1854. On June 29, 1875, Col. William R. Shafter and eighty-one men and officers tracked Comanches into county lands, when Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie conducted a campaign to drive them from the area. By 1876 all threat of Comanche attack was eliminated, and the area of Winkler County was opened for White settlement. In 1881 the Texas and Pacific Railway was built across nearby Ward County, giving easy assess to the area. With good transportation, with the land outside the dunefields covered in tall grasses, and with a good water supply available, the area was well equipped for open range ranching. A few ranchers took advantage of free state land to carve out large ranches. Among those first ranchers were John Avary, J. J. Draper, and the Cowden brothers-Doc, Tom, and Walter. On February 26, 1887, Winkler County was established from territory in Tom Green County. It was named for Confederate Col. Clinton M. Winkler . By 1890 eleven men and seven women, all White, lived in Winkler County. The state ended free use of its land in 1900, and state agents were sent across West Texas to collect rents from ranchers on public land. In the census of 1900 twelve ranches, totaling 67,537 acres and 11,982 cattle, were operated by four owners and eight nonowners, and the county population was sixty. From 1901 through 1905 a state law allowed the sale of school lands in West Texas. Since one could purcha