Monahans, Texas

Everything Monahans is known for

7 songs mention this city 3 artists from here

Monahans, Texas, located in the Permian Basin and known as the "Center of the Permian Basin" due to its prolific oil and gas production, has a musical identity shaped by artists who call it home and songs that mention the town. Seven songs in our collection reference Monahans, including "Monahans" by Justin Haigh and "trouble" by Chris DeAnda. Three artists are from Monahans, with Chris DeAnda and Lawson Knight contributing to the country music landscape, and Susan Ashton representing gospel music.

Music in Monahans

Songs About Monahans

Monahans
Justin Haigh
82%
no man's land
miranda lambert
10%
trouble
chris deanda
10%
on the banks on the old ponchartrain
hank williams
10%
Homegrown Tomatoes
Jack Ingram
6%
"Come on Guy, get us all high, sing us a country song"
Solid Country Gold
Parker McCollum
4%
"Guy Clark on the radio"
Open Road
Drew Kennedy
2%
"just outside of Monahans"

Artists From Monahans

S
Susan Ashton
gospel Pop: 38
C
Chris DeAnda
country Pop: 13
L
Lawson Knight
country Pop: 4

Rivers & Roads in Song near Monahans

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Monahans.

Interstate 20 10 songs

History of Monahans

Wickett, TX RoadyGoat

Wickett, Texas, a name that echoes with the rumble of trains and the grit of West Texas soil. It wasn’t named for some grand historical event, or a sweeping vista, but for a man of the rails: William Wickett, a railroad official. That simple act of naming speaks volumes about the town's origins. The railroad was its lifeblood, the artery that brought commerce and connection to this high plains outpost. You can almost picture the surveyors, pausing in the shade of a mesquite, deciding on a name that honored the very infrastructure that made Wickett possible. Even now, with Interstate 20 slicing through, the spirit of the railroad lingers. There’s a local tale, never quite proven, of a hidden cache of bootleg whiskey buried somewhere near the old tracks from the prohibition era. Imagining that lost stash, baking in the sun under the vast West Texas sky, feels fitting. Wickett, a quiet spot, might not be the first place you think of for wild stories. And just a short drive away, the Monahans Sandhills offer a surreal landscape of shifting dunes, a reminder that even in the most seemingly static places, things are always changing, shaped by unseen forces, just like the legacy of William Wickett that still lives on.

6.6 mi away

Wickett, TX RoadyGoat

Wickett, Texas, wasn't much of anything until the railroad came through, and then suddenly in 1927, there it was. Named for some railroad man, William Wickett, they say. It's a flat, high place, close to 3,000 feet, where the sky just opens up and stretches forever. You can see the pronghorn antelope running in the distance, a reminder of what was here before. Even now, with Interstate 20 cutting right through town, you get a sense of that open range. Oil, of course, changed everything. It always does out here. It’s still the lifeblood, the industry that keeps folks working. There's a boom-and-bust rhythm to it, but Wickett’s always been resilient. It holds on. You can feel it in the community, a quiet strength. Born right here. And if you listen close enough, some say you can still hear echoes of the old bootleggers near the tracks, maybe even find a hidden stash if you’re lucky. The Monahans Sandhills are just a stone's throw away, too – a reminder that even in the flattest land, there's always something surprising to discover.

6.6 mi away

Wickett, TX RoadyGoat

Wickett, Texas, sits high on the plains, close to three thousand feet under the widest sky you've ever seen. Interstate 20 cuts right through it now, but back in '27, when they named it after that railroad man, William Wickett, it was the trains that mattered. And where there are trains, well, there's always a story. Some say there's still a stash of bootleg whiskey buried out near the old tracks, left over from a time when things were a little wilder.

6.6 mi away

Million Barrel Tank

1928

A project of the Shell Oil Company, the construction of this oil storage tank in 1928 was the result of an oil boom in the area. Built to accommodate crude oil until it could be shipped to refineries, the tank was constructed by crews working on a 24-hour schedule using hand operated and horse-drawn equipment. Covering eight acres of land, the tank was able to hold over one million barrels of oil. It was filled to capacity only once. Efforts to convert it into a water-filled recreation center in the 1950s were unsuccessful, and it became a museum in 1986.

Historical Marker →

Trooper Billy Jack Zachary Memorial Highway

2006

Honors TX DPS Trooper Billy Jack Zachary, killed on New Year's Day 2006 when struck by a passing vehicle during a traffic stop on I-20 in Ward County near Monahans.

Historical Marker →

Christ The King Catholic Church_Sands Art Center

1925

Area Catholics held religious services in their homes beginning in the mid-1920s until a donation of money and two lots here in 1938 enabled the congregation to construct this modestly detailed structure known as Christ the King Catholic Church. Although the building was expanded in 1954 the congregation relocated in 1961. In 1965 the building became the Sands Art Center for art workshops, exhibits, craft shows, and occasional community theatre. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1992

Historical Marker →

Monahans Sandhills

3,840 acres of sand dunes up to 70 feet tall in West Texas, remnants of ancient Permian sea beaches. Oak trees grow in the sand.

Natural Landmark → · 5.2 mi away

Sublett, William Caldwell

1881

William Caldwell Sublett, West Texas pioneer who discovered gold in the lower Pecos River region, the son of Caldwell and Nancy Sublett, was born on September 25, around 1834, in Tennessee, possibly in Franklin County. He grew up in what was then Belton County, Alabama, where his father served as sheriff in the 1840s and 1850s, and nurtured a dowsing ability as a youth. He first moved to Texas after the winter of 1857 and served as a Texas Ranger in Capt. Edward Burleson 's company from January 20 until September 9, 1860. After eighteen months somewhere on the frontier he returned to the settled part of Texas to find the nation torn by the Civil War . He joined Gordon's Regiment, First Arkansas Cavalry, Confederate States of America, on August 4, 1862, and was cited for gallantry in the battle of Fayetteville, April 18, 1863. After the war he married Laura Louisa Denny and moved to St. Louis, Missouri. He returned to Texas by July 1870 and took up residence in Bowie County, where he farmed intermittently the next four years. His wife died in 1873, leaving their three children in his care. After late 1874 he moved them to West Texas and took up buffalo hunting . About 1880 Sublett became an advance water scout and supplier of game meat for the Texas and Pacific Railway, which was pushing westward from Fort Worth. In early 1881, while operating from the temporary railhead at Colorado (later Colorado City), he discovered gold dust and nuggets somewhere in the Pecos River country at a site he contended was a mine; he would not divulge the location. He lived briefly in Granbury in the early 1880s before becoming one of three men to settle Monahan (Monahans) in 1883. By 1887 he had moved to Odessa, where he assumed two Ector County homesteads in the next two years; he sold one and fulfilled occupancy requirements for a patent on the other. Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s Sublett made periodic trips to his gold source but continued to live frugally enough that he paid taxes on only $265 in possessions in 1891. Repeated attempts to track him to the site of the mine or wrench directions from him failed, and the location of his gold went with him when he died in Barstow, Ward County, on January 6, 1892. His son, Rolth (or Ross) Sublett, became chief among the many who later searched for the Lost Sublett Mine. Rolth claimed that as a boy he once accompanied his father to the site, which he believed lay in the Guadalupe Mountains or in the Rustler Hills of Culberson County. All efforts at finding the mine have met with failure.

Tsha Handbook → · 12.0 mi away

Pyote Air Force Station

1942

Pyote Air Force Station (formerly Pyote Army Air Field) was established as a bombardment crew training base during World War II and nicknamed "Rattlesnake Bomber Base" by the servicemen. It was on 2,745 acres of University of Texas land a mile southwest of the town of Pyote, twenty miles west of Monahans and just south of U.S. Highway 80. Two giant runways, each over 1½ miles long and 150 feet wide, and a taxiway formed a triangle on the flat, arid land. Construction of the facilities, including five large hangars, shops, warehouses, and living quarters, began on September 5, 1942. The first troops were assigned within a month, well before the base was completed. Troops and civilian technicians poured in, and the population of the base grew steadily to a peak of over 6,500 in October 1944. Within four months of its opening, the base had become the largest bomber installation in the country. Despite morale problems caused by isolation and the shortage of off-base recreation and of dependents' housing, Pyote achieved a distinguished record in molding inexperienced individuals into effective bomber crews. After the arrival of the famed Nineteenth Bombardment Group on New Year's Day, 1943, and the ceremonial inauguration of its training program on January 5, Pyote rapidly turned out crews proficient in hitting targets from the B-17 Flying Fortress until the summer of 1944, when it was switched to the B-29 Superfortress. The Nineteenth was the first air force unit to bomb Japanese targets; it flew to Pyote directly from combat in the Pacific. The base was redesignated the Nineteenth Combat Crew Training School late in 1943 and then replaced on March 30, 1944, by the 236th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School). In June 1945 the base claimed records for the most B-29 training hours flown by any base in a single month (7,396), in a week (1,873), and in a day (321). Control of Pyote was transferred from the Second Air Force to the San Antonio Air Technical Service Command on November 15, 1945, at the end of the war, and the base became an aircraft-storage depot. At its peak in 1948 the depot, which was maintained by the 4141st Army Air Forces Base Unit, housed 2,042 stored planes, mostly B-29s and B-17s, but including B-25s, A-26s, C-47s, P-63s, P-51s, AT-7s, L-5s, and L-4s. Best known of all was the Enola Gay , from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; this famous plane was flown to Washington, D.C., on December 2, 1953, for preservation at National Air and Space Museum. After the Korean War, all of the planes at Pyote were moved or scrapped, and most activity on the base ceased. For a few years in the 1950s and 1960s, the 697th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, an Air Defense Command unit, operated a radar site on the base. Following the deactivation of the site in 1966, base housing was taken over by the West Texas Children's Home, and the land and remaining buildings reverted to the University of Texas. By 1985 a single large hangar and slowly deteriorating runways and taxiways were all that marked the once-busy bomber base.

Tsha Handbook → · 14.1 mi away

Things to Do in Monahans

nature 5.0 mi away
Monahans Sandhills State Park

Four thousand acres of active sand dunes in the middle of the West Texas desert. The dunes are still moving -- wind pushes them several feet a year and the…

Everything Near Monahans

39 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Monahans on the Map
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