DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Ector County Discovery Well. Now, some stories start with a bang. This one started with thirty-eight barrels a day — and nobody clapping.
December 28, 1926. Out in Ector County, a drill bit punched through to something that would rewrite the whole future of this part of Texas. The well they brought in was called the J.S.
Cosden No. 1-A W.E. Connell — named, the marker tells us, for the driller and the owner of the land. Big name for a well.
Modest results. Thirty-eight barrels per day. That's it.
That's what came up. Now, you or I might look at a gusher of black gold and feel our hearts race just a little. The folks around Ector County in 1926?
They were not exactly throwing their hats in the air. The marker is pretty plain about it — that meager initial output did not cause much excitement. But here's the thing about experts.
They looked at those thirty-eight quiet barrels, they looked at the geology underneath — the Permian Basin, they called it — and they said: there is vastly more down there. Vast oil deposits, just waitin'. Turns out, they were right.
Because three years later, in 1929, a man named Robert Penn brought in a gusher. And that gusher didn't whisper. It catapulted Odessa — the marker uses that word, catapulted — straight into boom-town fame.
One well changes the temperature of a whole city. That's how fast the world can turn. Oil has sustained the economy of that region from that moment forward.
The Permian Basin delivered on every promise those experts made standin' over thirty-eight modest barrels back in '26. As for the discovery well itself — the J.S. Cosden No. 1-A W.E.
Connell, the quiet pioneer that started it all — it was plugged and abandoned in 1940. No fanfare on the way out either. Just like it came in.
Sometimes the one who opens the door doesn't get to walk through it. But without that door, none of the rest of this story exists.
What the marker says
The discovery of Oil in Ector County December 28, 1926, marked the beginning of a new economic era for this region. The first Well, " J.S. Cosden No.1-A W.E. Connell ", was named for the driller and owner of land. Its meager initial output of 38 barrels per day did not cause much excitement, but experts insisted that vast oil deposits lay under area (permian basin). In 1929, Robert Penn's Gusher catapulted Odessa to boom-town fame. Oil has sustained the area economy since then, although the discovery Well was pugged and abandoned in 1940. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967.