Oil History in Foard County

Although oil leases in Foard County had been sold as early as 1901, no actual discoveries were made until 1925, when the Thalia field was first drilled; the boom there started in 1929, when the Shell Petroleum Company struck a pool that yielded 500 barrels a day. Beginning in 1933 the Texas Company (Texaco) discovered the county's largest oil and gas field twenty miles west of Crowell. In March 1934 a $150,000 natural gas stripping plant was built at the field, with a three­inch pipeline laid from there to the railroad tracks at Foard City. Another pipeline was built to transport natural gas about thirty miles to the West Texas Utilities plant east of Quanah. The Gamble­Dickerson field northeast of Crowell produced several wells beginning in 1940, but gas pressure and shallow oil depths later led to its abandonment. In 1938 county oil production reached 240,742 barrels, but by 1944 production had declined to 59,408 barrels; by 1948 it had dropped to 22,012 barrels, and by 1956 only 769 barrels of petroleum were produced in the county. A resurgence occurred in the late 1950s, when the Lucerne Corporation opened the Rasberry field nine miles northwest of Crowell. In 1960 the county produced 850,330 barrels of crude; in 1978, almost 191,000 barrels; and in 1982, 493,234 barrels. In 1990 production was more than 347,000 barrels. Cumulatively, by the beginning of 1991, 20,816,157 barrels of crude had been produced in Foard County since 1929.

From Bailey Phelps, They Loved the Land: Foard County History (Quanah, Texas: Quanah Tribune-Chief, 1969).