DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Now, they called this stretch of west Texas the Wildcatters' graveyard. That ought to tell you something.
Dry hole after dry hole, busted dreams baked into the caliche, all of it sitting on top of thirty thousand acres belonging to the T. G. Hendrick ranch.
Men had come out here and walked away with nothing but debt and sunburn. So when Roy A. Westbrook and his associate came along and leased that land at ten cents an acre, well — you can imagine what the locals thought of that particular business decision.
Ten cents an acre for a graveyard. Real bold move, or real foolish one. Hard to tell the difference out here until the ground makes up its mind.
They put the bit in the earth and they drilled. Down through the rock, down through the dark, down toward three thousand feet and beyond. And then, about midnight on September the third, nineteen twenty-six — not high noon, not a convenient hour, but midnight, because that's how west Texas does things — that well arrived.
And it did not arrive quietly. Great blasts of oil and rock came roaring out of the ground like the earth itself had been holding its breath for a hundred million years. The eventual depth came to three thousand and forty-nine feet.
What followed was the Hendrick Field — a ten thousand acre oil pool that turned out to be very prolific, to put it mildly. Six hundred and twelve wells in all, drilled across those same acres where so many had failed before. The discovery well itself was plugged in nineteen thirty-nine, by which point it had given up two hundred and thirty-five thousand barrels of oil.
But here's the thing that outlasted the barrels — the data gathered at this well proved vital to the future drilling of the El Capitan reef lime, a major oil-bearing geologic formation. The wildcatters' graveyard turned out to be sitting on top of something that changed how people understood the rock beneath all of west Texas. Ten cents an acre.
About midnight. Great blasts of oil and rock. Some bets pay off in ways nobody at the table could have predicted.
What the marker says
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 ranch. Drillers Roy A. Westbrook & Associate leased land at 10 cents an acre. Well arrived dramatically, in great blasts of oil and rock, about midnight, Sept. 3, 1926. Its eventual depth was 3,049 feet. Total production when plugged in 1939 was 235,000 barrels. Data gathered here was vital in future drilling of El Capitan reef lime, a major oil-bearing geologic formation. (1972)