Goldsmith: It's a Last Name, Not a Trade RoadyGoat

1936

Out in the Permian Basin sits a little town called Goldsmith, and the name conjures gold, or the old craft of working precious metal. It's neither. When folks petitioned for a post office in nineteen thirty-six, they first wanted to call the place Ector City, but that name was already taken in Texas. So they settled on Goldsmith, honoring rancher C. A. Goldsmith, whose land took in the townsite. The real treasure here turned out to be oil: the field had opened in nineteen thirty-five, and the town shot up fast around the boom. So the gold in Goldsmith isn't gold at all. It's a rancher's surname, sitting on top of an oil field.

From Waste Gas to Car Tires RoadyGoat

As you look around the oilfields here, you are seeing a chemical operation as much as a drilling one. One of the more interesting pieces of engineering in Goldsmith's history was not pulling oil out of the ground, it was making something out of the gas that came up with it. West Texas gas is often sour, loaded with hydrogen sulfide, and for years it was simply flared off as waste. But burn it under carefully starved conditions and you get carbon black, an extremely fine, pure carbon powder. That powder turned out to be a revolutionary reinforcing agent for rubber. It is what makes a tire black and what makes it last. Texas got so good at this that by 1937 the state was producing eighty-two percent of the nation's carbon black. A plant went up in the Goldsmith field during the World War Two buildup, and around 1950 Phillips Petroleum bought it and ran it on discharged gas from its refinery right here. A hazardous byproduct, engineered into a key ingredient of something on every car in America.

RoadyGoat →

The Boomtown Frenzy of the 1930s RoadyGoat

Imagine this spot in the early 1930s: nothing but scrub brush and ranch land belonging to a man named C. A. Goldsmith. Now picture it a few years later. The Permian Basin has cracked open underneath it, and the landscape is a chaotic, energetic boomtown carrying the rancher's name. When the oil came in, people arrived faster than anybody could house them. They lived in tents, crude shacks and trailers. In 1936 a woman named Imogene Bunn petitioned for a post office — the name they wanted, Ector City, got rejected because Texas already had one. By 1937 there were churches, a grocery store, a restaurant and a rooming house, all humming with people who had found work in the depths of the Great Depression. A school followed by 1938, and that same year the kerosene lamps went out and the electric lights came on. It was a raw, noisy, hopeful place, built in a flash on the promise of black gold.

RoadyGoat →

Goldsmith

1935

Opened as oil field June 14, 1935, with flow of 1140 bbls. of crude oil daily from discovery well. Within a month, shacks and tents housed 350 people. Harry L. Tucker in May 1937 platted town of Ector City. Name later changed to honor C. A. Goldsmith, owner of the land. In 2 years, Goldsmith had cafes, taverns, a hospital, movie theater, hotels, motels, shops and a newspaper First residents paid 25 cents at only bath in town -- a shower sprayed from an overhead tank. Now a gas processing and distribution center. (1965)

Historical Marker →

Meteor Crater At Odessa

The Meteor Crater at Odessa (also known as Odessa Meteor Crater), the third largest meteor crater in the United States, is located ten miles southwest of Odessa and three miles south of Interstate Highway 20 in south central Ector County. Three craters make up the depression, which was formed in prehistoric time when thousands of iron meteorites known as octahedrites fell on the site. The largest crater covers ten acres. Two smaller and now-filled craters flank it. The rim of the largest crater rises from five to seven feet above the general level of the surrounding plain. The largest crater is filled by wash and wind-blown material to within nine to fourteen feet of the rim. The roughly circular depression is 500 to 650 feet wide from rim to rim. The impact of the meteorites displaced Cretaceous limestone, lifting it forty-five to fifty feet above its original position, folding it into a vertical position, and faulting it. The principal meteorite mass has been determined by bore holes to be near the center of the largest crater at a depth of 164 feet. In 1892 Julius D. Henderson, a local rancher, discovered the depression while searching for a lost calf. He only noted that the depression was different from the surrounding terrain. In 1920 Virgil Graham, an Ector County resident, found a volcanic-like rock near the depression. He gave the rock to Samuel R. McKinney, who used it for a paperweight until A. C. Bibbins, a Baltimore geologist, saw it in McKinney's office. Bibbins recognized it as a meteorite fragment and sent it for analysis. Although several people realized that the depression and its fragments were unusual, no one recognized the site as a meteor crater until Elias H. Sellards went to Ector County in 1922. As director of the Bureau of Economic Geology, Sellards was looking for potash when he came upon the crater in the field. After his discovery scientists from many places came to study the crater. In September 1939 an excavation project was funded by the University of Texas, Ector County, and several businesses and individuals. Machinery and lumber were bought for construction and operation of a shaft and a road. The Work Projects Administration provided workers. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before and after World War II to build a park at the site.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.2 mi away

Penwell, TX

1929

Penwell, sixteen miles southwest of Odessa in southwestern Ector County, was named for J. H. Penn, a veteran West Texas oil operator, who drilled the discovery well of the Penwell-Jordan oilfield. When Penn's well, the R. R. Penn Kloh-Rumsey No. 1, came in on October 7, 1929, the area began to develop rapidly. The townsite was officially laid out on November 8, 1929, and a post office was established there in 1930. The first residents lived in tents or hastily constructed shacks, but eventually better housing was built. Because many of the early settlers were only temporary residents, accurate population statistics are difficult to ascertain. For example, Penwell's 1930–31 population was given as 230 in one source, but as 3,000 in another. According to one source, during the early 1930s Penwell had six lumberyards, several rooming houses, several filling stations, two or three clothing stores, two hotels, a doctor's office, a drugstore, a barbershop, a pool hall, a dance hall, and a paper, the Penwell News . For a while there was also a school, but later local students were transferred to the Odessa schools. After the 1930s Penwell's population decreased because of a decline in local oil drilling and the movement of workers to larger cities. In 1980 its population was estimated at seventy-five, and the town included a post office, a service station, a welding shop, and a beer store. Some ranches were in the vicinity. In the 1980s the nearby Odessa Raceway Park was operating from May through October. Monahans State Park is just outside of town. In 1990 and again in 2000 the population of Penwell was reported as seventy-four.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.2 mi away

Notrees - A Town That Lived Up to the Name

1946

Unincorporated oil-camp settlement in Ector County west of Odessa, founded in 1946 by Shell Oil. Postmaster Charlie Brown named it for the obvious fact that there were no trees. A few were planted later, briefly making the name a lie.

9.7 mi away

Notrees

1944

Post Office established 1944 in drug store of C. J. Brown, Jr., who named it in response to U.S. Postoffice Dept. request for title suitable to locality. Residents have since made history by planting shade trees. Now production hub of permian basin; center of gas processing industry, and home of Otto's boys ranch.

Historical Marker → · 9.2 mi away

West Odessa, TX

1979

West Odessa is on the western edge of Odessa and Monahans Draw in central Ector County. It is a wedge-shaped sixty square-mile area, bordered by Farm roads 866 and 302, Loop 338, and Interstate Highway 20. It was named for its proximity to Odessa and was settled primarily from 1979 to 1982, the years of the last oil boom. The community began in a previous boom, and it expanded and declined with each subsequent boom and bust. A few large homes in West Odessa were built as ranch houses at an earlier time when the surrounding land was devoted to cattle raising. Over the years the town enveloped them. In 1985 two-thirds of the housing units in West Odessa were mobile homes. That year the community had a population of 13,350, 216 businesses employing 1,925 workers, eleven churches, a public elementary school, and a volunteer fire station. In 1987 a branch of the Odessa post office was established in the community. In 1988 West Odessa reported a population of 27,116 and twenty-seven businesses. West Odessa has two serious problems-poor soil and water. Much of the soil in the community is inadequate for gardening. It is a shallow and gravelly loam overlying caliche and gypsum. Small pockets of good calcareous loams are found in choice sites. Scattered caliche pits dot southwestern areas of West Odessa. In the 1990s water was supplied from wells and from county sources. Many residents considered their water to be only fair. In 1990 the population was 16,568. The population was 17,799 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook → · 12.1 mi away

Goldsmith, Texas

Music in Goldsmith

Songs About Goldsmith

Artists From Goldsmith

Rivers & Roads in Song near Goldsmith

History of Goldsmith