Ector County · 1936
Created February 26, 1887 from Tom Green County organized January 15, 1891, named in honor of Matthew Duncan Ector 1822-1879. Member of the Texas legislature a confederate officer and outstanding jurist Odessa, The…
View on map ↗Ector County, Texas
Historical Markers in Odessa, Texas
Odessa is home to 41 official Texas Historical Commission markers — each one telling a piece of the city’s story. Browse the markers below, then find them on the map and discover more nearby with RoadHistorical.
Barrow Ranch House · 1962
(RTHL medallion - no text)
View on map ↗Odessa Meteor Crater · 1962
East and South (route marked) is located the Odessa Meteor Craters, formed in prehistoric time when a great shower of nickel-iron meteorites collided with the earth. Geologists estimate that the time of the meteor fall…
View on map ↗General Matthew D. Ector · 1963
Enlisted 1861. Lieutenant 3rd Texas Cavalry. Fought Arkansas, Missouri and Indian territory. As colonel led 14th Texas Cavalry Kentucky invasion. Made brigadier general 1862 to command famed Ector's brigade in Tennessee…
View on map ↗Comanche War Trail · 1964
A Barred, Bristling flying wedge--the Comanches--Rode into 18th century Texas, driving the Wichitas and Caddoes East, the Apaches West, becoming lords of the south plains. Harassed the Spanish and Anglo-Americans along…
View on map ↗Ector County Courthouse · 1964
Seat of justice for Ector, created out of Tom Green County in 1887 and organized in 1891. The 1891 courthouse was frame, the remodelled town sanitarium, moved to the present square. Its first floor had rooms for the…
View on map ↗Emigrant Trail · 1964
Road of stubborn seekers of 1849 California gold fields and better life. Bringing the old, infant, the yet unborn and all worldly goods, family wagons entered Texas at Preston, on Red River, to go southwest via springs…
View on map ↗Odessa · 1964
After the Texas and Pacific Railway extended its line to the South Plains of Texas in 1881, the Odessa Land and Townsite Company of Zanesville, Ohio, began promotional efforts to attract settlers to its property along…
View on map ↗Old Buffalo Wallow · 1964
The nearby depression survives from an epoch when great buffalo herds migrated through west Texas, many moving between present Canada and Mexico over two major trails in the Odessa area. Wallows began with individual…
View on map ↗Permian Basin · 1964
One of the two richest oil fields in the world. Discovery began in 1920 at a Mitchell County Well. Next came the 1923 big lake strike, then the wild 1925 boom in Upton County, followed by production in Andrews, Crane,…
View on map ↗Prairie Dog · 1964
Actually a squirrel. Gets name from its bark. It was food for settlers, especially in drouths. Lives in cluster of burrows called a "Town". Burrows, hazardous to running horses, often have caused broken bones among…
View on map ↗The Cable Tool Rig · 1964
Equipment that replaced the spring pole drilling method used in America's earlier oil fields. The Cable Tool Rig used a bit suspended on a steel drilling cable. The bit is dropped in the hole and the impact breaks up…
View on map ↗The Jackrabbit · 1964
True plains Rabbit. Lives only in the west. Burro-like ears gave him his name. color is protective, blending with sand and dry grass. Very long legs make him a swift runner, clocked at speeds to 45 miles and hour.…
View on map ↗Baker Ranch School · 1965
Since there were no public schools in rural Ector County, R.W. Smith and Teague Baker in 1906 erected an 8'x10' school building in Baker's pasture. They hired a teacher at $15 a month, plus room and board, which each…
View on map ↗Ector County Land Rush · 1965
Here in 1904 a fight involved almost every man in Ector County, over filing a claim for 4 sections of public land. Elias Dawson and Charlie Lewis each brought friends to help him file. Before courthouse doors opened,…
View on map ↗Ector County's First Dry Hole · 1965
Drilled in 1924 near this site. Geologists were forecasting oil and urgently-needed potash, but Pennsylvania experts (using a chilled shop core drill) gave up the well at 900 feet, on "Red Bed" Rock--A substance new to…
View on map ↗Homer Robert Henderson · 1967
Texas Ranger; deputy sheriff; county commissioner in Ector and (later) in Crane County. Born in Wilson County; one of 12 children of Robert and Mary Elizabeth (O'Neal) Henderson. Came to Odessa as member of company a,…
View on map ↗Mrs. John L. Morris (Marjorie) · 1967
Originator, promoter of the Globe of the Great Southwest, world's most nearly authentic replica of the Globe Theater in England made famous by the plays of William Shakespeare. Mrs. Morris was educated at North Texas…
View on map ↗Odessa Land & Townsite Company · 1967
The Texas & Pacific Railroad transferred 640 acres of its land grants here in 1886 to John Hoge of Zanesville, Ohio. He formed the Odessa land & townsite company to promote sale of town lots. Prime house lots sold for…
View on map ↗Site of Homestead of William C. Sublett · 1967
Born 1835 in Alabama. Moved to north Texas before the Civil War, in which he served as a Confederate. After his wife died in 1874, he went to the Texas frontier to hunt Buffalo, taking his three young children with him.…
View on map ↗Site of Odessa College · 1967
Established through efforts of Odessa Townsite Co., which gave $12,000; a northern methodist group matched this fund in 1888. Rev. M. A. Daugherty, Pittsburgh, Pa., was placed in charge, and a 20-acre plot was allowed…
View on map ↗Site of Old Livery Stable and Wagon Yard · 1967
Established 1897 as Odessa's first livery stable and wagon yard by Francis M. Tallant. Cowmen stabled their horses, then headed for ranch saloon located across from stable. Sold 1906 to C. A. Beardsley, who advertised…
View on map ↗Site of The Dawson Saloon · 1967
Frontier business of S.T. (TOL) and E.F. (LISH) Dawson, brothers. Lish Dawson, 1891-92 Sheriff of Ector County, had a barber chair in the Saloon, and helped tend bar. Liquor was in 40-gallon barrels. Ice for drinks was…
View on map ↗Site of The Odessa Sanitarium · 1967
Established in 1886 by Odessa Townsite Company, the Odessa medical and surgical sanitarium was directed by Dr. R.E. Haughton, a former railroad physician from Indiana. It was located in a two-story wooden structure of…
View on map ↗The Caprock · 1967
A range of flat-topped ridges and cliffs stretching from Texas panhandle to 20 miles South of this point and extending into new Mexico. The name also refers to tough limestone that caps ridges. Rising sharply 200 to…
View on map ↗Well's Point · 1967
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…
View on map ↗El Paso Natural Gas Company's First Compressor Transmission Engine · 1970
A landmark tool in man's conquest of energy. This compressor went into use in Culberson County, Tex., on Oct. 1, 1931, and served until 1969, aiding in the rise of the southwest as an industrial empire. This was the…
View on map ↗Waddell Pecan Tree · 1972
A few years after Odessa was founded in 1881, a squirrel stole a pecan from a neighbor's porch, and buried it in the yard of W. T. Malone, planting this tree. A rarity in the downtown area, it became a well-known…
View on map ↗Ector County Newspapers · 1974
In 1895, William C. "Uncle Billy" griffin came to Odessa from Midland and began publishing Ector County's first Newspaper, the Odessa "weekly news'. The "weekly news" lasted only a year, and was followed by six other…
View on map ↗Odessa Telephone Exchange · 1974
Began operation about 1897, with Edna Fielding as "central" (operator). After Miss Fielding's death in 1902, the Rev. G. B. Ely, a baptist minister, purchased the exchange. Pioneer rancher A. Quincy Cooper bought the…
View on map ↗White-Pool House · 1980
Charles White (1824-1905) moved his family here from Indiana seeking new business opportunities and a drier climate for his wife's health. With the aid of his sons Wilfred Walton White and Herbert Haughton White, he…
View on map ↗Site of Blackshear High School · 2006
In early 1890, Inez Rathbun earned money teaching area students at the Ector County Courthouse. About the same time, Ector County organized a public school system. Over the next decades, the number of students in the…
View on map ↗Emmet V. Headlee, M.D. · 2011
Emmet V. Headlee was a fourth-generation physician; his great-grandfather, Elisha Headlee, was a civil war surgeon. His grandfather and father practiced medicine in Teague (Freestone Co.), and Emmet was born there in…
View on map ↗Captain Randolph B. Marcy's Southern Route Expedition · 2014
The California Gold Rush in 1849 prompted the U.S. government to appoint army captains to escort prospective gold seekers to California. Captain Randolph B. Marcy was one of these captains appointed by the Secretary of…
View on map ↗Earl George Rodman, Sr. and William Douglas Noel · 2015
Earl George Rodman, Sr. (1896–1976) and William Douglas Noel (1914–1987) brought the petrochemical industry to Odessa. Rodman and Noel came together in 1946 to form the Odessa Natural Gasoline Company and enjoyed major…
View on map ↗Odessa Petrochemical Complex · 2015
In the 1950s, the Odessa Petrochemical Complex was the largest of its kind in the world. The first business to occupy the future complex was the Odessa Natural Gasoline Company founded in 1946 by four west Texas…
View on map ↗Gardendale · 2016
Located in northern Ector County, Gardendale is an area known for horse ranches, oil production and pecan orchards. Prior to 1950, the area was owned by a Sherman physician and called Neathery Ranch. In the late 1950s,…
View on map ↗W.T. Barrett Stadium · 2016
As the focal point of the city of Odessa for over 30 years, W.T. Barrett Stadium was built in 1948. The stadium, built of steel and wood and nicknamed “W.T.,” witnessed thousands of west Texans compete for the win as…
View on map ↗Ector High School · 2017
With the discovery of oil in Ector County in 1926, the area saw a continuous influx of people to work in the oil fields. As the general population grew so did student enrollment in area schools. As a result, on March…
View on map ↗St. Joseph Catholic Church · 2017
St. Joseph Catholic Church began in 1948 as a mission of St. Mary’s Church to provide for the needs of the Hispanic community of Odessa. The Catholic presence in west Texas can be traced back as far as the early 1500s…
View on map ↗First National Bank of Odessa · 2018
Early banking in west Texas prior to federal and state regulations often consisted of handshakes and few contracts. Lending services were first offered in Odessa by B. Blankenship & Co., General Merchandise (established…
View on map ↗Discover Odessa’s history on the road
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