Ten Dry Holes Came Before Mexia Found Gas, Then Oil

A trustee of the Houston and Texas Central Townsite Company laid out Mexia in 1870. By 1885 the railroad town had a gas works, an opera house, two banks, and two sawmills. The Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway added another line between 1904 and 1906.

The Mexia Gas and Oil Company drilled ten dry holes before its eleventh attempt found a large natural-gas deposit in 1912. The oilfield followed in 1920. The Handbook of Texas reports the population rising from 3,482 to nearly 35,000 during the rush.

Local authorities could not manage the rapid growth, and Mexia was briefly placed under martial law in 1922. Oil production also peaked that year at 35 million barrels. Together, those facts show both the economic scale and the civic strain of the rush.

Voters adopted a city-manager charter in 1924. By the middle of the decade, the population was back near 10,000, though oil prosperity continued into the 1930s. In twelve years, Mexia moved from an eleventh drilling attempt to gas, oil, martial law, peak production, and a new form of city government.