DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice givin' it a ride down the road. Now, you want to talk about persistence, Garza County wrote the book. From 1911 all the way to 1919, drillers kept poking holes in this West Texas earth, and every single one of them came up dry.
Unsuccessful ventures, the marker calls them. That's a polite way of saying years of sweat, money, and hope poured straight into the ground with nothing coming back up. Most outfits would have looked elsewhere.
But this is Texas, and sometimes the story isn't over, it's just waiting. The well that finally changed everything was begun in 1924, out on the J.M. Boren property near Justiceburg.
The outfit doing the drilling was Phelps, Caldwell and Blackwell Oil Company. They kept at it, and in 1926, they brought in the first oil producer Garza County had ever seen. Now, I'll be honest with you.
It wasn't exactly a gusher for the ages. By the time that well was abandoned in 1932, it had produced a total of 1,641 barrels. Not a fortune.
But it was proof. Then, also in 1932, four producing wells were completed south of Post, and a refinery was built near the city. Something had shifted.
The county that couldn't buy a drop of oil for over a decade suddenly had fields, and refineries, and wells multiplying across the landscape. Today, Garza County counts some 1,500 wells, and those wells have produced more than 85,000,000 barrels of oil. All of that, tracing back to one well, on the Boren property, after years of coming up empty.
Sometimes the ground makes you wait. But eventually, it pays.
What the marker says
(3 1/2 miles east) After several unsuccessful ventures from 1911 to 1919, the first oil producer in the county was completed on J.M. Boren property at Justiceburg in 1926. The well was begun in 1924 by Phelps, Caldwell and Blackwell Oil Company. It produced a total of 1,641 barrels before it was abandoned in 1932. In 1932 four producing wells were completed south of Post; a refinery was built near city. Garza County has a number of fields, and its 1,500 wells have produced more than 85,000,000 barrels of oil. (1967)