|
Oil
& Cattle
Garza
County is a 30 mile by 30 mile square county. The area is 900 square
miles or approximately 576,000 acres. The county has about 110,000
acres of cropland and 450,000 acres of rangeland.
Garza
County has 400 active cropland farms operated by 150 farmers. Annually,
40,000 acres of upland cotton are planted, with 27,000 acres being
dryland and 13,000 acres being irrigated. Normal yields for dryland
cotton are 350 pounds per acre and for irrigated cotton are 600
pounds per acre. Other crops grown in the county are sweet sorghum
for hay, wheat for grazing, and grain sorghum for grain. About 22,000
acres are enrolled in USDA's Conservation Reserve Program, a permanent
grass program that takes cropland out of annual crop production.
Garza
County has about 75 active ranches that primarily raise beef cattle.
The 450,000 acres of rangeland normally support 16,000 head of cattle.
Livestock water is provided primarily by earthen ponds and to a
lesser degree by windmills.
C.W.
Post began with a project he had in Mind from the earliest days-
the sinking if a deep well on his land to determine whether oil,
gas mineral underlay them. This was along before there was and thought
of oil in West Texas.
Post
hired a geologist who reported that there was a possibility of a
large pool in the area. A standard well-drilling outfit of the day,
with a large steam boiler, was moved to Post City before the railroad
was finished, and in September, 1910, an oil driller and his crew
began work at the site that was started near the company store in
the town, in his search for drinkable water. By March 1911, the
drilling crew reached 1,394 feet and had stripped the threads of
the drill on granite. The crew was unable to get the pipe out from
the bottom of the well, and it had to be abandoned . In April 1911,
Post decided to have another one bored on the plains near the commissary,
and in January 1912, the drillers had reached 1712 feet. At this
point they lost a drill rod in the well, and their efforts to get
it out failed. By this time Post spent about $20,000 on his deep
well project with nothing to show for it, and he decided to halt
the project. Had he preserved and put he the well down another three
hundred feet, he would have found oil. Post's hunch that oil underlay
a good deal of West Texas has since his time been proved more accurate
that he could have imagined; West Texas has since proved more accurate
than he could have imagined; West Texas is one of the world's leading
areas of oil production.
Victor
L. Ashley
County Executive Director
Garza-Borden FSA
|
