The Winkler County Discovery Well was the first of 612 wells in Hendrick Field, a very prolific 10,000-acre west Texas oil pool. The area, known as the "Wildcatters' graveyard," lay on the 30,000-acre T.G. Hendrick ranch, where drillers Roy A. Westbrook & Associates leased land at 10 cents an acre. About midnight on Sept. 3, 1926, the well came in dramatically in great blasts of oil and rock. Its eventual depth was 3,049 feet, and when it was plugged in 1939, its total production was 235,000 barrels. Data gathered there was vital to future drilling of El Capitan reef lime, a major oil-bearing geologic formation.