The skyline rises out of nothing. Drive across the flat West Texas plains and Midland appears the way nothing else out here does — a cluster of high-rises standing straight up off the caprock, visible for miles before you reach the city limits. They call it the Tall City, and the towers are monuments to what lies beneath: the Permian Basin, the richest oilfield in America. Founded in 1881 as a dot on a railroad timetable and built into the corporate capital of the oil boom, Midland is a city that runs on what is buried under it — and its story is the story of West Texas itself.
Midland began as a dot on a timetable. In late June 1881 the Texas & Pacific Railway, building its line between Dallas and El Paso, put down a section house at the halfway point on the Llano Estacado — the high, flat, semi-arid "staked plains" — and called it Midway Station. Herman N. Garrett, a sheep rancher who drove his herd out from California in 1882, became the first permanent resident. Texas already had other Midways, so when the settlement won a post office in January 1884 it took a new name to get it: Midland. A land company promoted the townsite across the Midwest, Midland County was organized in March 1885 with the young town as its seat, and by 1890 Midland was one of the state's important cattle-shipping points — ranch country at nearly 2,800 feet, incorporated as a city in 1906.
Why People Visit Midland Texas
- Tour the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, with interactive galleries on the geology and engineering of the oil boom and a replica 1930s Boom Town.
- Visit the Museum of the Southwest, combining art, science, and a children's museum on a historic estate.
- Walk the downtown Tall City core to see the high-rise skyline that rises straight off the plains.
- See the Bush Family Home, a Texas Historical Commission state historic site in a 1940s neighborhood.
- Catch a performance at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center, the region's marquee venue.
