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.
The oil came in 1923. On May 28, out on University of Texas land in Reagan County southeast of town, the Santa Rita No. 1 — named by its crew for the patroness of impossible causes after four hard years of drilling — blew in and revealed what the Permian Basin held. Midland made itself the boom's headquarters: rather than the rigs and roughnecks of the field, it drew the offices, the geologists, the landmen, and the executives, and by 1929 thirty-six oil companies ran their Permian operations from downtown. Where blue-collar Odessa, twenty miles west, worked the field, white-collar Midland ran the business — two cities, one basin, a partnership written into West Texas ever since.
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.
