Thorntonville, Texas

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Thorntonville

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Thorntonville.

Interstate 20 13 songs Pecos River 12 songs

History of Thorntonville

The Toughest Town on the Pecos RoadyGoat

The West Texas oil boom that made this corner of the map arrived in 1926, when the Hendrick oilfield opened and Ward County went from empty to crowded almost overnight. Pipelines and railroad loading tanks went up at Wickett, Pyote and Monahans, and small settlements like Thorntonville filled with people chasing the work. The wildest of it, though, happened about thirty miles west, over the county line in Winkler County, at a town called Wink. Wink went from nothing to thirty-five hundred people by late 1927 and six thousand by 1929, and it brought bootlegging, prostitution and gambling with it. The underworld got so far inside the new city government that a district judge threw out the incorporation election outright in October of 1928, and Texas Rangers under Captain Wright were sent into boom towns like Wink to put the lid back on. Thorntonville sat close enough to feel the money, and close enough to hear the stories.

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Engineering the Boom's End RoadyGoat

The oil that built this corner of West Texas came out of the Hendrick field, and the way it was produced is a hard lesson in reservoir engineering. The oil sat in porous limestone, and beneath it lay water under enormous hydrostatic pressure — that pressure was the thing pushing the oil up in the first place. In the frenzy after the 1926 discovery, wells went in on town-lot spacing, packed shoulder to shoulder, and the reservoir pressure was simply wasted. Production peaked in March of 1929: more than five million barrels in a single month from five hundred seventy-seven wells. Then the water came up behind it. By the end of 1931 the field was in steep decline and every well in it was making water — twenty-six barrels of saltwater lifted for every barrel of oil. Millions of barrels stayed in the ground for good. Thorntonville didn't die of it, though. It's still here, five hundred-odd people, a lot quieter than the boom ever imagined.

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The Tank That Couldn't Hold Oil RoadyGoat

If you have a moment, you should see one of the strangest landmarks in Texas: the Million Barrel Museum. Its centerpiece is a colossal concrete tank built in 1928 by Shell Oil. During the frantic oil boom, pipelines couldn't be built fast enough, so Shell decided to construct a massive reservoir to store the crude. It was an ambitious oval, 525 feet by 422 feet, covering about eight acres. But there was a problem. The concrete had been poured in sections, and nobody then had a good way to seal the seams. When they finally ran a million barrels of oil into it, the weight came to four hundred million pounds of pressure, and the oil simply seeped down into the sand. It held its load exactly once, and that was the end of the experiment. For years it sat empty, a giant concrete bathtub in the desert — a later owner even tried turning it into a water park, and that lasted a single day. Today this monument to boom-time ambition is a community museum and event space, a fascinating reminder of a time when the oil flowed so fast people didn't know what to do with it.

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Holman House

1910

Built about 1910 by Mr. and Mrs. Jas. R. Holman, 1898 settlers in Monahans. "Dad" Holman had a lumber and coal business, dray, and livery stable; he met daily trains and took home seekers of salesmen to the family hotel. One of family's six children was Eugene Holman (1895-1962), petroleum industry leader who rose in 1944 to presidency of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the world's largest oil company. Outstanding in labor relations, he was an advisor to U. S. Dept. of Commerce; won (1960) American Petroleum Institute gold medal of distinguished achievement.

Historical Marker →

Trooper Billy Jack Zachary Memorial Highway

2006

Honors TX DPS Trooper Billy Jack Zachary, killed on New Year's Day 2006 when struck by a passing vehicle during a traffic stop on I-20 in Ward County near Monahans.

Historical Marker →

Million Barrel Tank

1928

A project of the Shell Oil Company, the construction of this oil storage tank in 1928 was the result of an oil boom in the area. Built to accommodate crude oil until it could be shipped to refineries, the tank was constructed by crews working on a 24-hour schedule using hand operated and horse-drawn equipment. Covering eight acres of land, the tank was able to hold over one million barrels of oil. It was filled to capacity only once. Efforts to convert it into a water-filled recreation center in the 1950s were unsuccessful, and it became a museum in 1986.

Historical Marker →

Monahans Sandhills

3,840 acres of sand dunes up to 70 feet tall in West Texas, remnants of ancient Permian sea beaches. Oak trees grow in the sand.

Natural Landmark → · 7.2 mi away

Sublett, William Caldwell

1881

William Caldwell Sublett, West Texas pioneer who discovered gold in the lower Pecos River region, the son of Caldwell and Nancy Sublett, was born on September 25, around 1834, in Tennessee, possibly in Franklin County. He grew up in what was then Belton County, Alabama, where his father served as sheriff in the 1840s and 1850s, and nurtured a dowsing ability as a youth. He first moved to Texas after the winter of 1857 and served as a Texas Ranger in Capt. Edward Burleson 's company from January 20 until September 9, 1860. After eighteen months somewhere on the frontier he returned to the settled part of Texas to find the nation torn by the Civil War . He joined Gordon's Regiment, First Arkansas Cavalry, Confederate States of America, on August 4, 1862, and was cited for gallantry in the battle of Fayetteville, April 18, 1863. After the war he married Laura Louisa Denny and moved to St. Louis, Missouri. He returned to Texas by July 1870 and took up residence in Bowie County, where he farmed intermittently the next four years. His wife died in 1873, leaving their three children in his care. After late 1874 he moved them to West Texas and took up buffalo hunting . About 1880 Sublett became an advance water scout and supplier of game meat for the Texas and Pacific Railway, which was pushing westward from Fort Worth. In early 1881, while operating from the temporary railhead at Colorado (later Colorado City), he discovered gold dust and nuggets somewhere in the Pecos River country at a site he contended was a mine; he would not divulge the location. He lived briefly in Granbury in the early 1880s before becoming one of three men to settle Monahan (Monahans) in 1883. By 1887 he had moved to Odessa, where he assumed two Ector County homesteads in the next two years; he sold one and fulfilled occupancy requirements for a patent on the other. Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s Sublett made periodic trips to his gold source but continued to live frugally enough that he paid taxes on only $265 in possessions in 1891. Repeated attempts to track him to the site of the mine or wrench directions from him failed, and the location of his gold went with him when he died in Barstow, Ward County, on January 6, 1892. His son, Rolth (or Ross) Sublett, became chief among the many who later searched for the Lost Sublett Mine. Rolth claimed that as a boy he once accompanied his father to the site, which he believed lay in the Guadalupe Mountains or in the Rustler Hills of Culberson County. All efforts at finding the mine have met with failure.

Tsha Handbook → · 10.9 mi away

Pyote Air Force Station

1942

Pyote Air Force Station (formerly Pyote Army Air Field) was established as a bombardment crew training base during World War II and nicknamed "Rattlesnake Bomber Base" by the servicemen. It was on 2,745 acres of University of Texas land a mile southwest of the town of Pyote, twenty miles west of Monahans and just south of U.S. Highway 80. Two giant runways, each over 1½ miles long and 150 feet wide, and a taxiway formed a triangle on the flat, arid land. Construction of the facilities, including five large hangars, shops, warehouses, and living quarters, began on September 5, 1942. The first troops were assigned within a month, well before the base was completed. Troops and civilian technicians poured in, and the population of the base grew steadily to a peak of over 6,500 in October 1944. Within four months of its opening, the base had become the largest bomber installation in the country. Despite morale problems caused by isolation and the shortage of off-base recreation and of dependents' housing, Pyote achieved a distinguished record in molding inexperienced individuals into effective bomber crews. After the arrival of the famed Nineteenth Bombardment Group on New Year's Day, 1943, and the ceremonial inauguration of its training program on January 5, Pyote rapidly turned out crews proficient in hitting targets from the B-17 Flying Fortress until the summer of 1944, when it was switched to the B-29 Superfortress. The Nineteenth was the first air force unit to bomb Japanese targets; it flew to Pyote directly from combat in the Pacific. The base was redesignated the Nineteenth Combat Crew Training School late in 1943 and then replaced on March 30, 1944, by the 236th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School). In June 1945 the base claimed records for the most B-29 training hours flown by any base in a single month (7,396), in a week (1,873), and in a day (321). Control of Pyote was transferred from the Second Air Force to the San Antonio Air Technical Service Command on November 15, 1945, at the end of the war, and the base became an aircraft-storage depot. At its peak in 1948 the depot, which was maintained by the 4141st Army Air Forces Base Unit, housed 2,042 stored planes, mostly B-29s and B-17s, but including B-25s, A-26s, C-47s, P-63s, P-51s, AT-7s, L-5s, and L-4s. Best known of all was the Enola Gay , from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; this famous plane was flown to Washington, D.C., on December 2, 1953, for preservation at National Air and Space Museum. After the Korean War, all of the planes at Pyote were moved or scrapped, and most activity on the base ceased. For a few years in the 1950s and 1960s, the 697th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, an Air Defense Command unit, operated a radar site on the base. Following the deactivation of the site in 1966, base housing was taken over by the West Texas Children's Home, and the land and remaining buildings reverted to the University of Texas. By 1985 a single large hangar and slowly deteriorating runways and taxiways were all that marked the once-busy bomber base.

Tsha Handbook → · 12.1 mi away

Things to Do in Thorntonville

nature 7.0 mi away

Monahans Sandhills State Park

Four thousand acres of active sand dunes in the middle of the West Texas desert. The dunes are still moving -- wind pushes them several feet a year and the…

Everything Near Thorntonville

64 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

The Toughest Town on the Pecos · 0.3 mi
The West Texas oil boom that made this corner of the map arrived in 1926, when the Hendrick oilfield opened and Ward County went from empty to crowded almost overnight. Pipelines and railroad loading tanks went up at…
Engineering the Boom's End · 0.3 mi
The oil that built this corner of West Texas came out of the Hendrick field, and the way it was produced is a hard lesson in reservoir engineering. The oil sat in porous limestone, and beneath it lay water under…
The Tank That Couldn't Hold Oil · 1.3 mi
If you have a moment, you should see one of the strangest landmarks in Texas: the Million Barrel Museum. Its centerpiece is a colossal concrete tank built in 1928 by Shell Oil. During the frantic oil boom, pipelines…
Surfing the Texas Desert · 1.3 mi
Just outside of town lies a landscape that feels more like the Sahara than Texas. Monahans Sandhills State Park protects 3,840 acres of sand six miles northeast of Monahans - and that is only a small piece of a dune…
An Engineering Failure in the Sand · 1.3 mi
The Million Barrel Tank, now a museum, is a powerful lesson in civil engineering. Built in 1928 by Roxana Petroleum - later absorbed by Shell - it was meant to solve a logistics problem: where to put the flood of…
The Rattlesnake Bomber Base · 1.3 mi
During World War II, the skies west of Monahans roared with the sound of B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-29 Superfortresses. Just 20 miles down the road near the town of Pyote, the military built a massive training…
Trooper Billy Jack Zachary Memorial Highway · 1.3 mi · Historical Marker
Honors TX DPS Trooper Billy Jack Zachary, killed on New Year's Day 2006 when struck by a passing vehicle during a traffic stop on I-20 in Ward County near Monahans.
Monahans, TX · 2.0 mi
Monahans' history as a community extends back to the late 1880s with the expansion of the Texas and Pacific Railway across the South Plains. The building of a transcontinental railroad through the area meant the arrival…
Christ The King Catholic Church_Sands Art Center · 2.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the Christ the King Catholic Church, which began in the mid-1920s with services held in homes. A donation in 1938 allowed construction of this building. Though the congregation moved in…
Trooper Billy Jack Zachary Memorial Highway · 2.5 mi · Historical Marker
Interstate Twenty on the east side of Monahans, from mile marker eighty to mile marker eighty two, is named for Trooper Billy Jack Zachary. On New Year's Day, two thousand six, Zachary had two vehicles stopped on the…
Holman House · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker
Built about 1910 by Mr. and Mrs. Jas. R. Holman, 1898 settlers in Monahans. "Dad" Holman had a lumber and coal business, dray, and livery stable; he met daily trains and took home seekers of salesmen to the family…
Million Barrel Tank · 2.9 mi · Historical Marker
A project of the Shell Oil Company, the construction of this oil storage tank in 1928 was the result of an oil boom in the area. Built to accommodate crude oil until it could be shipped to refineries, the tank was…

Show all 64 nearby places

Taming the Sour Gas · 4.7 mi
Wickett exists because of what comes up out of the ground alongside the oil. This was a railroad switch called Arroya back in 1881, nothing more. Then the Hendrick field opened in 1926, an oil discovery followed in…
Wickett, TX · 4.7 mi
Wickett sits high on the plains, a little over half a mile above sea level. The air is thin and dry, and the sky stretches on forever, a vast, pale blue bowl. This is Permian Basin country, a land sculpted by ancient…
Monahans Sandhills State Park · 7.0 mi · Things to Do
Four thousand acres of active sand dunes in the middle of the West Texas desert. The dunes are still moving -- wind pushes them several feet a year and the…
Monahans Sandhills State Park and Museum · 7.1 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through the Monahans Sandhills, a landscape that's been a crossroads for thousands of years. Primitive peoples hunted here as early as 10,000 years ago, and later, tribes like the Jumanos and Apaches…
Monahans Sandhills · 7.2 mi · Natural Landmark
3,840 acres of sand dunes up to 70 feet tall in West Texas, remnants of ancient Permian sea beaches. Oak trees grow in the sand.
Sand Hills Section House · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Monahans, and you might see the remains of a place that kept the railroad running out here. Built in 1903 by the Texas & Pacific Railway, this section house was one of several spaced every 20…
Willow Springs · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Willow Springs. Located 6.6 miles east of this site in the Sand Hills, Willow Springs was known to Comanche Indians and to West Texas pioneers as an important source of water. It was frequently used…
Ward County · 8.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Ward County, Texas, formed from Tom Green County in 1887 and organized in 1892. It's named for Thomas William Ward, a man who served as Commissioner of the General Land Office and as a U.S. consul…
Sublett, William Caldwell · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
William Caldwell Sublett, West Texas pioneer who discovered gold in the lower Pecos River region, the son of Caldwell and Nancy Sublett, was born on September 25, around 1834, in Tennessee, possibly in Franklin County.…
Holman, Eugene · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through West Texas, and right here in Monahans, a young Eugene Holman grew up. He'd go on to become one of the most influential oilmen of the 20th century. After studying geology, he worked his way up…
Monahans, TX · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Monahans, a town that owes its very existence to a desperate need for water out here in West Texas. Back in 1881, long before I-20, Thomas John Monahan dug the first well between the Pecos River…
Ward County · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Ward County, and right here, the landscape changed dramatically in the 1920s. Before then, it was mostly ranching and a few struggling farms, hit hard by floods and droughts. But in 1926, the…
Dunagan, John Conrad · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through West Texas, maybe near Monahans, where J. Conrad Dunagan spent much of his life. He wasn't just a businessman, running Coca-Cola bottling plants and banks, but a passionate historian and…
Texas-New Mexico Railway · 10.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Ward County, and right here is the legacy of the Texas-New Mexico Railway. Chartered in 1927, this line was built to connect Monahans to Kermit, a crucial thirty-five miles across West Texas. It…
Pyote Air Force Station · 12.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
Pyote Air Force Station (formerly Pyote Army Air Field) was established as a bombardment crew training base during World War II and nicknamed "Rattlesnake Bomber Base" by the servicemen. It was on 2,745 acres of…
Pyote, TX · 12.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Pyote, a town that boomed and busted thanks to oil. Back in 1926, oil was discovered nearby, and suddenly, this quiet spot on the railroad became the bustling trading center for the Hendrick…
West Texas State School · 12.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving past the West Texas State School, right here on the edge of Pyote. This place wasn't always a school for young men. It started in 1966 as the West Texas Children's Home, a place for dependent and…
Rattlesnake Bomber Base · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the Pyote Army Air Base, nicknamed the Rattlesnake Bomber Base. Established in 1942, it trained thousands of bomber crews for World War II, flying B-17s and later B-29s. After the war,…
The Rattlesnake Bomber Base · 13.1 mi
Look out across the flat land surrounding Pyote, and imagine it covered with bombers. During World War II, this was the site of the Pyote Army Airfield, the largest airfield in Texas by acreage and a major bomber…
The Great Desert Boneyard · 13.1 mi
After World War II ended, Pyote’s airbase took on a new, eerie role. It became one of the nation’s largest aircraft storage facilities, a 'boneyard' for the very planes that had won the war. The dry desert air was…
The Madness of the Oil Boom · 13.1 mi
Imagine this quiet town as a scene of total chaos. After the Hendrick oilfield came in near here in 1926, Pyote - a railroad siding with a post office and a school - turned into the trading and shipping center for the…
The Science of the Boneyard · 13.1 mi
When the military chose Pyote as a post-WWII 'boneyard,' it was a calculated scientific decision. The primary enemy of a parked airplane isn't time; it's moisture. The low humidity of the Chihuahuan Desert made this an…
Pyote, TX · 13.1 mi
Once a small town, Pyote's fortunes rose and fell with the oil industry and the construction of a railroad. At its peak, Pyote boasted 3,500 residents. However, the town's population decreased when the railroad was…
Royalty, TX · 14.6 mi
The local industry in Royalty was heavily influenced by oilfield activity, which at one point, saw the community's population peak at 750 in 1940. However, as the oilfield activity declined, the population also fell,…
Engineering an Oasis · 16.6 mi
The existence of Grandfalls is an engineering marvel. In the late 1880s, settlers looked at the dry Chihuahuan Desert and the muddy Pecos River and devised a plan. Two brothers-in-law, R. I. Carr and J. T. Sweatt, threw…
The Lost Falls of the Pecos · 16.6 mi
The town of Grandfalls is named for a landmark most people passing through have never seen. When settlers arrived in the late 1880s, they found a stretch of the Pecos about three miles west of here where the river…
A Six-Man Football Dynasty · 16.6 mi
In Texas, football is a way of life, and in a town the size of Grandfalls that means six-man football. For schools too small to field eleven, this wide-open, high-scoring version of the game becomes the center of…
Grandfalls, TX · 16.6 mi
The town of Grandfalls, Texas, owes its name to its proximity to the 'grand falls' of the Pecos River. This natural landmark serves as a distinguishing feature of the area and is the inspiration behind the town's name.
Red Bluff Dam and Reservoir · 16.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through West Texas, near the Pecos River, and right here is the Red Bluff Reservoir. It took years of planning and a whole lot of organizations, but construction finally started in 1934. This massive…
Grandfalls, TX · 16.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Grandfalls, a town born from the power of the Pecos River. Back in the late 1800s, settlers were drawn to this spot, not just for the water, but for the dramatic upper falls. Farmers R.I. Carr and…
Water Improvement District #2 · 16.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the old Water Improvement District No. 2 office, built way back in 1896. This building wasn't just for water management; it also served as the community center for Grandfalls. It was a hub for…
Grandfalls Union Church · 17.0 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Grandfalls, the first church building in this town, founded back in 1897. This Union Church was built in 1910 by three different Protestant groups, showing early cooperation.
Rig Theater · 18.0 mi · Scraped Hmdb
Hold on to your Stetson, partner, because this old movie house whispers tales of Wink's wild oil boom days. The Rig Theater was built in 1928. It was the only masonry building in town besides the school. During its…
Roy Orbison and the Wink Westerners · 18.3 mi
The haunting, powerful voice of Roy Orbison is probably Wink’s greatest claim to fame. He moved here in 1946, and this is where his musical journey began. As a student at Wink High School, he and some friends formed a…
Wink, TX · 18.3 mi
Wink, Texas. It's a little spot on the map, out in the Permian Basin, but it's surprising who's called this place home. Most folks know it for its two famous sinkholes, relics of the oil boom, that just seem to appear…
The Day the Earth Fell In · 18.3 mi
On June 3, 1980, the ground just outside Wink gave way. By the time it settled it was a terrifyingly large, water-filled crater about 360 feet wide and better than 110 feet deep -- and it had opened directly over an old…
The Science of the Wink Sinkholes · 18.3 mi
The giant sinkholes near Wink are a dramatic lesson in geology and unintended consequences. Deep beneath this area -- roughly 1,300 to 2,200 feet down, above the Permian Capitan Reef -- lies a thick layer of ancient…
Roy Orbison · 18.3 mi
You're driving past Roy Orbison. (April 23, 1936 - December 6, 1988)
 Roy Kelton Orbison was one of America's most famed rock and roll musicians. Born in Vernon (Wilbarger Co.), Orbison and family moved often…
The Chaos of a Boomtown · 18.3 mi
Try to picture the streets around you in 1928. They wouldn't have been paved. They would have been a sea of mud, churned by trucks and thousands of fortune-seekers. Wink went from a handful of ranch hands to about…
The Well That Built Wink · 18.3 mi
Every oilfield you see around Wink traces back to a stretch of country drillers called the wildcatters' graveyard - the fifty-three-section ranch of Thomas G. and Ada Hendrick. In 1925 a Fort Worth printer named Roy…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Wink (Wink) · 18.3 mi
Wink (Wink, TX) placed on the 2A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Cayson Cuellar (0.543 avg).
Wink, TX · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Wink, Texas, a town born from the oil boom. It all started in 1926 with the discovery of oil in the Hendrick field. By 1927, people were rushing in, setting up tents and makeshift homes on the T.…
Eskridge, Charles Sanford, Jr. · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Wink, Texas, the birthplace of Charles Sanford Eskridge, Jr., born here in 1937. Eskridge dedicated his life to advocating for the handicapped. From 1969 to 1979, he was instrumental in passing…
Butterfield Overland Stage Line · 18.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Ward County, following a route that was once a vital artery of the American West. This was part of the Southern Overland Mail Line, better known as the Butterfield Route. For three years, from…
Wink · 18.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Wink, a town that exploded into existence in 1926. A massive oil discovery just north of here brought between 10,000 and 20,000 people flooding into the area, transforming it almost overnight. The…
Winkler County Discovery Well · 18.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Winkler County Discovery Well. First of 612 Wells in Hendrick Field, a very prolific, 10,000 acre west Texas oil pool. This area, called "Wildcatters' graveyard", lay on the 30,000 acre T. G.…
Hendrick Oilfield · 19.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Winkler County, and right here is where the Hendrick oilfield blew in on July 16, 1926. It was a wildcat discovery, drilled on land leased from Thomas and Ada Hendrick for just pennies an acre.…
Winkler County · 19.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Winkler County, a place shaped by both sand dunes and the search for water. Long before settlers arrived, Native Americans like the Apaches and Comanches used this land, drawn by the water found…
Cheyenne, TX · 19.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
Cheyenne was on the W. F. Scarborough Ranch, nine miles north of Kermit in northern Winkler County. In 1926 oil was discovered in the county, and in 1927 the Scarborough field was found. Anticipating an oil boom in…
Hay Flat, TX · 19.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
Hay Flat was eight miles northwest of Kermit in northwestern Winkler County. In 1900 the four-section homestead law was passed, and new settlers came to the county. Some of the homesteaders settled near the T-Bar Ranch,…
Old Wink Cemetery · 19.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're passing through Wink, a town that boomed and busted with oil. Look for the Old Wink Cemetery, a place that remembers a darker side of that era. It holds a 'ghost' burial plot with 26 unmarked graves of…
Ector County Discovery Well · 20.0 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Penwell, where the Ector County Discovery Well changed everything on December 28, 1926. This first well, the J.S. Cosden No.1-A, only produced 38 barrels a day initially. But experts knew vast oil…

Explore Thorntonville on the Map

All music from Texas → Find another town Vote on city songs

Thorntonville, Texas

Rivers & Roads in Song near Thorntonville

History of Thorntonville

The Toughest Town on the Pecos RoadyGoat

Engineering the Boom's End RoadyGoat

The Tank That Couldn't Hold Oil RoadyGoat

Holman House

Trooper Billy Jack Zachary Memorial Highway

Million Barrel Tank

Monahans Sandhills

Sublett, William Caldwell

Pyote Air Force Station

Things to Do in Thorntonville

Everything Near Thorntonville

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