DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture this: 1879, and the Texas and Pacific Railroad is pushing west out of Fort Worth like it's got something to prove. Now, before you can lay track, before you can run a single train crew through that wide-open West Texas country, you need water.
And out on land that would one day become the town of Odessa, somebody put a shovel in the ground. July, 1881 — three water wells, dug ahead of the construction. That stretch of land got itself a name right then and there: Well's Point.
Now, I'll tell you, not everything went according to plan. One of those three wells turned out to be unusable — alkali-poisoned, no good to man nor beast. But the other two?
Those two wells held up. They supplied the construction men. They supplied the train crews.
Two wells doing the work of three, out in the middle of nowhere, and somehow that was enough. Then comes February of 1886. Just before the Odessa lot sale — and mind you, the timing here matters — a group of townsite promoters decided to make their entrance.
They didn't ride in quiet. No, the marker says they came to Well's Point in, and I love this detail, 'an armada of Prairie schooners.' That's not my word, that's the marker's word. Armada.
A fleet of covered wagons rolling across the Texas plain from Mariensfield — a place the marker notes is now called Stanton. An armada. For a town that didn't exist yet.
And then, August 4th, 1886, Odessa was born — on a section of land owned by the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The same railroad that sent its crews west. The same crews that needed water.
The same water that named a point on the map that no longer needed to be called Well's Point, because now it had a bigger name to carry.
What the marker says
Texas & Pacific Railroad Wells. In 1879 railroad headed west out of Fort Worth. Preceding construction - on land later in town of Odessa - water wells were dug in July, 1881. Town section was thereafter called "Well's Point". One well was unusable because of alkali; other two wells supplied construction men, train crews. February 1886, just before Odessa lot sale, a group of townsite promoters came to Well's Point in "an armada of Prairie schooners" from Mariensfield (now Stanton). Odessa was born Aug. 4, 1886, on a section owned by T. & P. Railroad. (1967)