Collection: Midland Texas

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 oil field in North America. Founded in 1881 as a railroad midpoint and built into the corporate heart of the oil boom, Midland is a city that runs on what is buried under it — and this page tells its story.

Midland began as a dot on a timetable. In 1881 the Texas & Pacific Railway laid track across the Llano Estacado — the high, flat, semi-arid "staked plains" of West Texas — and a townsite went up at the midway point between Fort Worth and El Paso, first called Midway Station and renamed Midland in 1884. Herman Garrett, a sheep rancher, was among the first permanent residents, and Midland County was organized in 1885. For its first decades the town was ranching country: cattle and sheep on the wide high plains at nearly 2,800 feet.

What's with the Tall City? Midland sits on dead-flat plains, so the first time a real downtown skyline went up, it stood out for miles in every direction — and the nickname stuck. The towers went up because the money did: as the Permian Basin oil business concentrated its corporate offices in Midland through the twentieth century, the downtown filled with high-rises that had no business being out on the West Texas flats. By the late 1970s the tallest reached more than 330 feet. The Tall City is exactly what it sounds like — a big-city skyline rising straight off the prairie, built on oil.

The oil came in 1923. The Santa Rita No. 1 well, drilled out in the Permian Basin, struck a field of staggering size and set off a boom that remade West Texas — and Midland made itself its capital. Rather than the rigs and roughnecks of the field, Midland drew the offices, the geologists, the landmen, and the executives; by 1929 dozens of oil companies ran their Permian operations from downtown. Where blue-collar Odessa worked the field a few miles west, white-collar Midland ran the business. The boom has come and gone in waves ever since, and the horizontal-drilling resurgence after 2010 set the whole cycle spinning again.

Our Midland logo carries a Texas longhorn — the breed that worked this range before the derricks — and a Lone Star over "1845," the year of statehood and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Texas place. Printed black-and-white with the worn look of a branding iron or a stockyard sign, the longhorn and star read as Texas in shorthand: cattle country, the Lone Star, the open West Texas horizon. What makes this one Midland is the place behind it — the Tall City, the Permian Basin, the wildcatter's gamble, and the skyline standing up off the plains.

Today Midland is the corporate capital of the Permian Basin — a high-plains city of oil and gas, energy professionals, and a downtown skyline that still surprises first-time visitors. The Permian Basin Petroleum Museum tells the story of the boom that built it, and the Museum of the Southwest anchors the city's arts and history. Our Midland designs gather that identity into wearable form — the Tall City, the longhorn-and-star, the oilfield grit, the big West Texas sky. Midland, Texas — where the skyline rises straight out of the plains and the whole town runs on what is buried beneath it.

Midland Texas — Travel Guide

Visiting Midland Texas Today

Midland stands on the high plains at the heart of the Permian Basin, where a surprising downtown skyline rises off flat West Texas country. Known as the Tall City and the corporate capital of the West Texas oil business, it pairs energy-country heritage with museums, parks, and big-sky horizons.

Oil Heritage, Museums & the Tall City in Midland Texas

For visitors searching for things to do in 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.

Why People Visit Midland Texas

Midland draws visitors with a mix of oil-country heritage, museums, and that unmistakable skyline standing up off the West Texas plains. Travelers find it both the business capital of the Permian Basin and a proud, practical high-plains city with deep boom-and-bust history. It is ambitious, plainspoken, and unmistakably West Texan.

For deeper reading on the Midland, Texas history described here — the 1881 Texas & Pacific Railway founding as Midway Station, the renaming to Midland and the 1885 organization of Midland County, Herman Garrett and the early ranching settlement, the 1923 Santa Rita No. 1 strike and the Permian Basin oil boom, Midland's rise as the corporate oil capital, and the Tall City skyline — it may be useful to consult (1) the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, (2) the Midland County Public Library's local-history and petroleum collections and the Midland County Historical Society, (3) the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Historical Commission, (4) the City of Midland and Midland County clerk's records offices, and (5) the libraries of the University of Texas Permian Basin and Midland College. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) Visit Midland (the Midland Convention and Visitors Bureau), (2) Travel Texas, (3) the City of Midland Parks and Recreation Department, (4) the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum and Museum of the Southwest visitor desks, and (5) the Midland International Air & Space Port information desk.