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.
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.
