The City of Wortham stands on land from a grant given in 1834 by Mexico to Robert B. Longbotham, an English-born Texas colonist who settled there in 1839. In 1871, when the Houston & Texas Central Railway was planned through the area, Longbotham sold right of way across his land for a token sum of $5, and investors bought the townsite from him. Although the town was platted as Tehuacana, a post office was established on Nov. 10, 1871, as Long Bottom for the original landowner. In 1874 the name was changed again to honor Col. Luther Rice Wortham, a merchant who was instrumental in securing the railway for the area. Wortham was incorporated in 1910 but remained a modest market town until the 1920s, when rumors of oil drew prospectors, including hotel man Conrad Hilton, who soon departed when wells produced salt water. A Thanksgiving Day gusher in 1924 opened the boom, and the population jumped from 1,000 to more than 30,000 at once. Law enforcement was impossible and housing was inadequate, but over time the town met its obligations, while churches and schools prospered. The municipal band became the official band of the 1926 United Confederate Veterans' Convention in Birmingham, Ala. Intensive drilling had ended the boom by late 1927, and in 1972 a few wells were still pumping while new horizons were being explored.