Oil Arrived in 1928, but Irion County's Surge Came Later

The first Irion County oil discovery did not bring an instant boom. Oil appeared in 1928, but production stayed modest for decades. The county produced 20,500 barrels in 1948 and 192,000 in 1956; substantial production did not begin until the late 1950s.

By 1965, production had reached 819,000 barrels. It climbed to 2.855 million by 1978. That surge helped reverse a long population decline: the county grew from 1,070 residents in 1970 to 1,386 in 1980.

Irion County belongs to Railroad Commission District 7C, served from San Angelo. The commission's well records reach back to 1920 and include drilling applications, completion reports, and plugging records. Those files make the landscape legible one well at a time: ranching came first, and oil wrote a second history across the same ground.