Crane, Texas

A natural salt deposit, known and used for the past 300 years. On land grant from Mexico to Juan Cordova; name, misread on maps, is now unique to lake. Apaches were encountered here by explorers in 1683. From days of early settlers, Mexicans and Anglo-Texans relied on this salt deposit. During the civil war, 1861-1865, a 7-family San Saba wagon train traded watermelons and other goods to Indians here for sorely needed salt. In 1912-1914 a 36-burro train hauled salt from here. Recently as 1930, commercial shipments went out to Midland and Odessa.

Noted church leader, educator. A Virginian. Received B. A. and M. A., George Washington University. Taught in Georgia, 1837-39; was ordained Baptist minister, 1838. Was pastor of various leading churches; president of 2 church colleges in Mississippi, 1851-60. Came to Confederate Texas, 1863, as president, Baylor University-- position held 22 years. His work and use of his personal funds kept Baylor open while many of state's 25 colleges were closed. First president, 1871, of Texas State Teachers Association and chairman, committee to study public school reorganization.

Crane County, at the western edge of the Edwards Plateau in Southwest Texas, is bounded on the north by Ector County, on the east by Upton County, on the south by Pecos County, and on the west by Ward County. It was named for William Cary Crane , a president of Baylor University. Crane County comprises 795 square miles of rolling prairie, bounded on the south and west by the Pecos River, which, with Juan Cordona Lake , drains the land. The center of the county lies at 31°25' north latitude and 102°30' west longitude, about forty miles south of Odessa. Rainfall averages 12.97 inches annually. The elevation varies from 2,400 to 3,000 feet above sea level. The average minimum temperature in January is 29° F; the average maximum in July is 96°. The growing season lasts 225 days, but there is very little farming. Cattle raising brings in about $1.5 million annually. Manufacturing income averages $1.4 million annually, derived largely from steel and concrete products. The county is among state leaders in oil and gas production. In 1982 oil production of almost 27,000,000 barrels earned $810,652,695. The area that is now Crane County was within the territory of the Lipan Apaches, who were among the originators of the plains culture common to Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, and other Indians. This part of the Pecos country may have been crossed by Spanish explorer Felipe de Rábago y Terán in 1761, and some of the early California-bound American travelers passed through Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing . Crane County was formed in 1887 from land previously assigned to Tom Green County the same year, but for many years the area's scant rainfall deterred settlement. In 1890 only fifteen people lived in Crane County; as late as 1900 the United States census enumerated only fifty-one people and twelve ranches in the county. Almost 17,650 cattle and 3,750 sheep were counted that year. The county seems to have experienced a brief burst of settlement during the first years of the twentieth century; Crane, the future county seat, became a post office in 1908, while census figures show that in 1910 there were seventy-one farms or ranches in the county, and that the population by that year had risen to 331. Almost no crop production was reported for the county in 1910, however, and in any case most of the new settlers had moved away by 1920, when only eight ranches, thirty-seven people, and about 4,700 cattle were reported. As late as 1918 the county had no roads, although the Texas and Pacific Railway crossed the northwest corner and the Panhandle and Santa Fe crossed the southern tip. The area only began to develop after oil was discovered in the county in 1926, when an oil boom attracted thousands to the county. O. C. Kinnison opened a realty office and platted a townsite for Crane, where he named the streets for his daughters and sons. He also invited a preacher to hold services in the area; according to county tradition, local gamblers resented the gesture and gave Kinnison a beating for it. Crane County was attached to Ector County for administrative purposes until 1927, but with (according to one estimate) 6,000 oil boomers in the area by that time, the county was ready for organization. The town of Crane, bustling with as many as 4,500 fortune-seekers, was designated as the county seat, and citizens organized to build a courthouse. Water was a scarce commodity. People paid a dollar a barrel for water brought from a well seven miles east of town, or, if prosperous, paid $2.25 a barrel for better water from Alpine. Water was too precious then for any use but cooking or home-made whiskey; women sent their laundry to El Paso. According to the census 2,221 people were living in Crane County in 1930. The county became one of the most productive oil counties in the state. In 1938 more than 5,494,600 barrels of oil was produced in the area; in 1944 more than 9,557,500 barrels was pumped, and in 1948 production was 16,851,698 barrels. Almost 27,377,

Crane, on U.S. Highway 385 and State Highway 329 in eastern Crane County, was named for Baylor University president William C. Crane . It is the seat and only town of the county and has the county's only post office, which was founded in 1908. The discovery of oil in the county in 1926 led to the county's organization the next year and to Crane's development as an oil boomtown. O. C. Kinnison opened a realty office and platted a townsite, naming the streets for his daughters and sons. Early residents had to put up with board sidewalks, unpaved roads, and limited services-including hauling their own water-until permanent housing and city utilities were built. Schools and other amenities were established at Crane as the local oil resources were exploited. Crane's population was reported as 1,420 in 1940, as 2,156 in 1950, as 3,796 in 1960, as 3,427 in 1970, and as 3,622 in 1980, when the town had a library, a swimming pool, and some 104 businesses. These included a steel foundry, a concrete plant, a nursing home, and a hospital (that was enlarged in 1962). A special edition of the Crane News in 1972 celebrated the county's production of one billion barrels of oil. In the 1980s the town was the service center for the region's flourishing oil industry. In 1990 the population of Crane was reported as 3,533. In 2000 the community contained 156 businesses and 3,191 inhabitants.

(Drilling site 2.25 miles southeast) Since 1839 Texas has set aside her public lands to finance education. The University of Texas at Austin acquired the land at this site in 1883, after the first owner, a railroad company, returned it to the state as worthless. For years McElroy Ranch grazed cattle here. On similar terrain 70 miles to the southeast the Santa Rita gusher blew in during 1923, and soon other university lands were being explored for oil. Church & Fields Exploration Company, composed of George M. Church and Robert Fields of San Angelo, obtained a permit late in 1925 to drill in Section 34, Block 30, in University Land on McElroy Ranch. On Dec. 28, 1925, contractor Burton F. Weekley and Driller John Garlin started the Church & Fields well, 2.25 miles southeast of this spot. In March 1926 this became Crane County's first oil producer, opening a new major field for west Texas. Soon other wells were drilled and local population rose from 27 to about 4,500. In Sept. 1927 county government was organized as a result of the oil field activity. Until 1955 the discovery well continued to produce. Since the day it proved successful and an asset to education and energy production, over a billion barrels of oil have come from University of Texas lands. (1978)

Castle Gap is a pass through the Castle Mountains, whose rimrock suggests the parapets of a castle, between Crane and McCamey at the edge of the Edwards Plateau in extreme western Upton County (at 31°18' N, 102°17' W). The gap is a mile long and only yards wide at its narrowest point. It lies 421 feet below the summits of Castle Mountain to the north and King Mountain to the south, each of which rises to an elevation of 3,141 feet. The pass opens westward to the arid lowlands of the Pecos valley and toward Horsehead Crossing, twelve miles west-southwest. Geologically, Castle Gap originated 135 million years ago as marine limestone deposits that eventually resulted in a great mesa subsequently split by erosion. In prehistoric times the gap was a natural gateway to and from crossings on the Pecos River for Indian nomads seeking buffalo on the Edwards Plateau or salt at Juan Cordona Lake, fifteen miles westward. Springs at the gap later prompted Comanches to name it Weick Pah, "Gap-Water." Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca describes a river flowing north to south with thirty leagues of plain on the west and an eastern ridge, identical to the topography of the Pecos River adjacent to Castle Gap. This fact suggests he may have passed through the break in 1535, when he traveled from the Texas coast to settlements in Mexico. In the fall of 1760 forty-one Spaniards dispatched by Capt. Felipe Rábago y Terán likely passed through Castle Gap in scouting a route from the presidio at the site of present-day Menard to Santa Fe. With the advent of the Comanche War Trail by 1800, Comanches, Kiowas, Rocky Mountain Utahs, and Plains Apaches used Castle Gap as a route to and from their raiding grounds in Mexico. Dr. Henry Connelly became one of the first English-speaking men to pass through the gap when he and a guard of fifty dragoons freighted seven wagons of bullion from Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, to an army post in what is now Oklahoma in 1839. By the late 1840s California-bound prospectors had established a wagon route from the confluence of the branches of the Concho in what is now Tom Green County up the Middle Concho to its head and across sixty-two miles of desert to Castle Gap. The necessity of surveying the region brought several parties to Castle Gap in 1849 and 1850, including those of John S. (Rip) Ford and Maj. Robert S. Neighbors in April 1849, Bvt. 1st Lt. Francis T. Bryan in July 1849, and John Russell Bartlett in October 1850. From 1858 to 1861 Butterfield Overland Mail stages passed through the gap twice a week on their 2,795-mile, twenty-five-day trips between Tipton, Missouri, and San Francisco. The first stage traversed the pass on the night of September 25, 1858, en route to fresh mules at Horsehead Crossing. Butterfield soon constructed a two-story stage station of native rock at the gap's west end, where a spring supplied the needs of attendants and stage teams. In an 1869 sketch, Col. Thomas B. Hunt pictured the station as two structures lying immediately south of the road. In 1864 William A. Peril drove the first cattle herd of any size through Castle Gap en route from the Hill Country to Chihuahua. The most noteworthy drive occurred in the spring of 1866, when Charles Goodnight , Oliver Loving , and eighteen men trailed 2,000 longhorn steers and breeding cows to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, from the Brazos in North Texas by way of the Middle Concho and Castle Gap. The drive opened up the Goodnight-Loving Trail for hundreds of succeeding drovers, who used the route as a springboard to push cattle as far north as Montana. In the 1860s and 1870s Castle Gap was the frequent site of raids on cattle herds by Indians, who used the cattle as barter with Comancheros in New Mexico. Because of this, alternate routes were employed as early as 1859. The railroad subsequently bypassed the gap to the south, and erosion destroyed the wagon road. Castle Gap was closed as a practical route between 1910 and 1920. Treasure hunters still frequent t