Monahans, Texas
Originally published in Texas Highways Magazine, 2024
I was approached by Texas Highways magazine to write an article about the small town where I grew-up. I wanted folks, outside the state of Texas, to be able to read about it too. So here is the article in its final form, unabridged and unedited, for those who do not subscribe to Texas Highways.
Enjoy.
Monahans, Texas
By C.S. Humble
A stone’s throw from Odessa, you will find a population of just over seven-thousand people living in a little oil field oasis known as Monahans. This is the pasture homeland for many West Texas families and what Valhalla looks like for bygone wild-catting oil men and rig swampers. A community of witnesses rising to glory amid the velvet dawn of each morning and the grandeur of a desert night that hides all of the landscape and none of the stars. You can drive through the whole of the town in no less than seven minutes, and in that mistake, miss every aspect of its spectacle.
Monahans is a country music balladeer’s dream, offering the familiar, rolling refrain of American fairs and horticultural showcases, cultural cookoffs, livestock auctions, and rodeos bookended by quarter horse parades and a celebration of the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach festival. And resting just outside the city limits, needing no official marker on the calendar for day trippers or locals alike, is the Monahans Sandhills State Park. Monahans’s Mayor Adam Steen provided me a little more local context, saying: “The park is vital to our community, bringing in tourists from all over the country. They come to admire the vast, unique landscape you will only find in West Texas.” The residents of the town make regular use of the 4,000-acre, Sahara look-alike. The park offers all that you would expect and a rarity, too: sand surfing down the dunes (a unique feature of the park) and hiking, picnic locales and partitioned camping sites. What you might not expect to find are dunes reaching over seven stories high and one of the largest oak forests in the United States. The miniature Harvard Oaks that comprise the 40,000-acre forest grow only shin high, but the wild expanse of them peppering the blonde sands are an oddity that strikes the eye when gazing into the long blue of the Texas horizon.
Like all of the oilfield cities comprising Permian Basin civilization, Monahans is not without its famous relics, stories of misfortune, and their historical mausoleums. During the 1920s boom, the Shell Oil Company was stricken with the not-so-unique problem of what to do with the overwhelming black gold drawn up from the heart of the Earth. They decided to hollow out a colossal cemented crater 35 feet deep and eight acres wide. Filled to its brim, the single, million-gallon barrel comprised wholly of concrete overloaded and cracked. The oil, that had been so painstakingly pulled from the ground, seeped through the fissures of the barrel back into the sand, returning its million gallons back to the millions of years long hiding place. Not thirty years later, a man named Wayne Long bought the barrel, sealed it back up and attempted to make it the crown jewel of watering holes. The grand opening and the life of the water park lasted the length of a single day. But, the old wounds opened again and stole the water as quickly as it had robbed Shell of its oil.
And as it has been true since the beginning of West Texas time, a thing that was broken was repurposed and given new life. The great barrel was transformed into a museum dedicated to the bad luck story. It is called the Million Barrel Museum (opening in 1987) and now houses an amphitheater where high school musical concerts and local special events are held. Mayor Steen says, “The Million Barrel Museum not only holds the rich history of Monahans, but of all of Ward county. It also houses the Rattlesnake Bomber Base Museum, which played an important roll in World War II and the flight of the Enola Gay.” The museum tells more of the tale and is certainly worth a pre-lunch visit.
Afterwards, visitors to this Texas marvel will be glad to avail themselves of a meal at Fermin’s Restaurant. There you will find some of the finest Tex-Mex food the world over. Mexican dishes of all sorts and kinds can be found in these parts, but you would be doing yourself a great disservice if you do not order a heaping bowl of Lily’s Queso. A creamy cheese dip infused with spicy sliced jalapenos and diced red chilies, fresh guacamole and sour cream that will, weeks after you have checked out of the cozy offerings of one of the Box House Villages and left this little town in the scarlet glow of your tail lights, spur within you a culinary nostalgia that will long to savor what your taste buds can only remember.
Monahans is a little oilfield town, a wave of light, a picture framed within the wide expanse of the Llano Estacado. She exists because of the oil beneath a tidal wave of sand, carrying within her boarders a population of proud families comprised of mothers and fathers, daughters and sons and truck drivers, teachers and every kind of worker that keeps straight the spine of the American economy. They, along with the town’s unique charm, welcome all visitors all the year round.