First Oil Well in Hockley County

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. On April 6, 1937, something happened out in Hockley County that would change this stretch of West Texas forever. The Texas Company, the outfit the world would come to know as Texaco, Inc., completed a well on land owned by a man named J.

E. Guerry. Now, when I say completed, I mean it came in.

Five thousand and twenty-three feet down, oil came flowing up at five hundred and two barrels per day. One well. One day.

The first drop in what would become one of the most productive fields in the state. The Guerry family had purchased that land, a hundred and twenty-seven acres of surface rights and one-eighth mineral rights, back in 1929. They bought it from R.

L. Slaughter, known to folks as Bob, who was, by any measure, a man of considerable holdings. Bob Slaughter had inherited over a hundred and sixty thousand acres of the Lazy S Ranch after the death of his father, Colonel C.

C. Slaughter. That's three generations of Slaughter family land, all of it sitting atop something nobody fully knew was there yet.

The Guerry well was drilled right in the heart of what came to be called the vast Slaughter field. And here's where the story gets almost hard to believe. That one well, that first well, was followed by another.

And another. And another. By the time anyone stopped counting for the marker, the county had over two thousand six hundred active wells, and those wells together had produced over four hundred million barrels of oil.

Four hundred million. All of it traced back to one April morning in 1937, five thousand and twenty-three feet straight down into the ground.

What the marker says

On April 6, 1937, this well was completed by the Texas Company (Texaco, Inc.), flowing 502 barrels per day from a depth of 5,023 feet, on land owned by J. E. Guerry (1885-1956). The Guerry family purchased surface and 1/8 mineral rights on 127 acres, in 1929, from R. L. (Bob) Slaughter (1870-1938), who inherited over 160,000 acres of the Lazy S Ranch after death of his father, Col. C. C. Slaughter (1837-1919). Located in the vast Slaughter field, this well was the first of over 2,600 active wells in the county, which have produced over 400 million barrels of oil. (1970)