A Railroad Built Odessa in the 1880s

Odessa exists because of the railroad. The Texas and Pacific Railway pushed across West Texas in July 1881. Railroad workers, some from Ukraine according to local tradition, named the settlement after Odessa, their home city. The town was officially platted in 1886.

Odessa became the county seat when Ector County organized in 1891. For nearly fifty years it remained a small ranching center until the oil boom of the late 1920s transformed it. Today, downtown Odessa sits on about 300 acres of the original 1886 townsite.