Life in the Oil Camps
Every once in a while, but less frequently lately, I read or hear something about the oil camps. Oil camps in the U.S. were built in remote fields where little, if any, social or economic infrastructure existed. Their make up ranged from a full-service city to a plot of a few houses.
I grew up, partially, in a small oil camp three miles outside Iraan, Texas. The camp abutted the huge and prolific Yates field, which is still in production. The town of Iraan was named for ranchers Ira and Ann Yates whose ranch sat atop the Yates field.
Growing up in the early 1950s in an oil camp miles from the nearest large city (10,000 population or more was large to us) had its moments. The camp, a Gulf Oil Company production camp, was comprised of two rows of houses facing each other over a single street. At one end stood the company warehouse and at the other, the company field office. The houses had been moved to the camp from a similar camp near Burkburnett and dated from a 1920s oil boom there. Although they housed families, they were designed as gang houses composed of a common room followed by a couple of bedrooms placed end to end (in other words, the house was only one room wide), then a kitchen and, finally, a bathroom/back porch combo. Each room had its own exterior door, much
like the house from the Texon camp pictured here. Hot water, and heat, came from field gas. Scorpions, poisonous spiders and poisonous snakes were fairly common, so common in fact that we gave them little thought save for a back -of-the-mind wariness.
There were several kids in the camp. In a way, every mother was a mother to all of us. That made it tough growing up because there was always a set of parental eyes on you. Consequently, we were almost always in some kind of trouble. My worst, and most frequent, transgression was slipping through the piping and hiding under cattle guards to watch cars and trucks pass overhead. I couldn’t explain the fascination today, but it was high style back then.
We had little in the way of entertainment. We occasionally drove the 50 or so miles to see a movie. On truly lucky weekends, the local oilfield supply store secured a movie which was projected on the side of their two-story building to a crowd assembled in lawn chairs on a near by lot. Otherwise, it was pretty much rock throwing wars, foot races and other such juvenile foolishness.
Had we lived in the big camp at Texon, oh how different things might have been. It was a metropolis. Built between 1924 and 1926 by the Big Lake Oil Company (BLOC) to house its employees and their families, the camp counted 1,200 residents by 1933. According to The Handbook of Texas Online (www.tshaonline.org), the BLOC provided a grade school, church, hospital, theater, golf course, tennis courts and a swimming pool for the camp. BLOC president Levi Smith was an avid baseball fan and sponsored the Texon Oilers, a semi-professional baseball team. The camp also housed commercial ventures including a drug store, a cafe, a boarding house, a tailor shop, dry-goods store, grocery store, barber and beauty shops, a service station, a dairy, an ice house and a bowling alley.
That’s a far cry from our 10 house outpost in deep West Texas. Still, I am guessing that they did not have a lot more fun than us.
If you grew up in an oil camp, or know someone who did and passed on some stories, please let me know at wpike@hartenergy.com.
Bill
Photo by TexasEscapes.com
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April 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am
I didn’t have the privilege of residing in a camp but on an Amerada lease behind the El Paso Natural Gas Plant #2 in Jal, New Mexico. The camp at least had a community building where the kids had dances. I had to spend the night with a friend who lived there in order to be able to go to the dance because my mother didn’t approve of dancing. Whenever possible I spent nights with my friend because I envied them the companionship of fellow camp dwellers. It definitely was lonely on a one house lease location and those EPNG Jal Camp Brats as they call themselves are still very close.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I grew up in small oil field camps. Most of the places I lived were miles from towns and certainly far from cities. My father, Loren Bowen, worked for Texas New Mexico Pipeline Company. This was the pipeline division of Texaco. I have lived as a small child in Loco Hills, NM. You won’t find anyplace more remote than that. I can remember going on an Easter Egg hunt and you always looked under the bush or in the hole before you reached for the eggs because a rattlesnake might be there. Then I lived in McCamey, TX and remember going swimming in a deep tank full of cold water and mossy sides. Another camp was outside of Eunice, NM. This camp was built in a horseshoe shape and all the children played outside, even if it was cold. I began school here and then we moved to Jal, NM. These two towns were football rivals so it really didn’t help to move to the other’s town. The Jal camp was a U-shape with a cattle guard at each entrance. We would often sit there and try to guess the color of the next car. When we rode horses, we would often jump the guards. Doesn’t sound very exiciting now! When it snowed, they would take the hood off a car and use it as a sled to pull the kids on around the camp road. There was always someone with which to play. You also made your own fun. My mother’s wash water was pumped into the back yard and that became the moat for a castle or running river between two mud mountains. There was one phone in the camp that could be used in an emergency. The Jal High School Band was small and if you could qualify, you could play and travel with the high school band when you were in the 7th grade. I moved back to Eunice my freshman year (yes, the rivals, again) and have wonderful memories there and in Jal. I made lifelong friends there(probably like prisoner bonding)!