Wichita Falls

By Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr.

North Texas was the traditional home of several tribes of Plains Indians, notably the Kiowa and Comanche. The first white settlers arrived in 1879, Wichita County was organized in 1882, and the railroad arrived the same year. Agriculture dominated the economy until early in the 20th century when oil was discovered in the area. This discovery led to an oil boom that peaked during World War I. For the next several years, Wichita Falls flourished as a refinery town while continuing to support the agricultural economy that was based largely on cattle and wheat. During World War II, Sheppard Air Force Base was established in Wichita Falls and is still an important contributor to the economy. The refineries have long since disappeared, but oil production and farming remain. Also important is Midwestern State University with a student body numbering approximately 6,000.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439638361

Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr.

Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr., Regents’ and Hardin Distinguished Professor of American History, emeritus, has taught at Midwestern State University since 1970. He is a nationally known scholar with interests in state and local, as well as national, history. Images of America: Wichita Falls is his 12th book.

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INTRODUCTION

The site of Wichita Falls in the North Texas grasslands just east of the hundredth meridian was the traditional homeland of nomadic Native American tribes, notably the Kiowa and Comanche. In the years following the Civil War, cattlemen began to invade the area in search of grazing for their herds, and by the late 1870s, permanent settlers appeared. By 1882, several of these hardy folks had established homes near the Wichita River and made their living by farming or selling needed supplies to the cattlemen. On September 27, 1882, the Texas Townsite Company held a town lot sale and Wichita Falls was born. This event would not have taken place except for the fact that the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad had agreed to extend its line right through the heart of the little village.

According to local lore, the first permanent settler on the site of Wichita Falls was John H. Barwise, who arrived with his wife and five children in 1879. Barwise began his new life in the prairie town as a farmer and then created his own freight line to carry his produce to market in Henrietta, the closest town with a railroad. Barwise persevered, and by 1882, he was doing well.

The little town continued to grow during the 1880s. More settlers arrived, lured by the availability of land and the presence of the railroad. Schools, churches, and new businesses appeared, and by the 1890s, Wichita Falls was the county seat of Wichita County and had become the rail center of the entire area. In fact, more railroads had been built, and one of them, the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway, was a project of Joseph A. Kemp and brother-in-law Frank Kell. Over the next several decades, Kemp and Kell were to become two of the most important and successful men in the city.

Kemp had decided to settle in Wichita Falls after a brief visit in 1883 persuaded him that the town offered many possibilities, and he went to work immediately upon his arrival. At first, he supplied staple goods to farmers and ranchers, and then he went into banking and real estate. Later he developed the city’s water supply system and experimented with various agricultural projects. Frank Kell worked closely with his brother-in-law on many of these projects but was primarily interested in the milling business. Shortly after his arrival, in 1897, he established his first mill, and the Wichita Mill and Elevator Company eventually became the largest operation of its kind in North Texas. Together Kemp and Kell built railroads, a lake, an irrigation system, a streetcar system, the first power company, and at least a dozen manufacturing plants of various kinds.

By 1901, Wichita Falls was a well-established community of about 5,000 souls; then came the discovery of oil. The first strike that year was in Clay County a few miles east of town. The second discovery came in 1911 near the town of Electra, located about 20 miles to the west, and the third was in 1918 near the village of Burkburnett, about 14 miles north. This one triggered a full-blown boom. The first gusher blew in on July 29, and before long, hundreds of wealth seekers descended on the area, hundreds of wells went down, and fortunes were made and lost in rapid succession. The boom would last until the early 1920s and would result in the transformation of Wichita Falls into a modern city.

One of the events that drove the boom was World War I, which broke out in Europe in 1914. In 1917, the United States entered the war and the demand for gasoline and other petroleum products escalated, but oil production was not the only contribution of Wichita Falls to the war effort. Soon after the United States entered the conflict, it was learned that the army proposed to establish more than 30 training camps in Texas, and Kemp and Kell, ever on the lookout for new projects, set out to bring one to Wichita Falls. They succeeded, and soon Call Field was in business on a 640-acre site just west of the city. Between August 1917 and July 1919, hundreds of young men were trained to fly in combat at Call Field and some 500 were commissioned. Thirty-four young cadets were killed in crashes while training at the field.

Before the oil boom, the city had experienced significant growth and development based on the agricultural economy of the area. After the boom, especially in the 1920s, growth continued at an even more frenetic pace with oil now the cornerstone of the economy. There was a building boom, a banking boom, a business boom, and a population boom. Between 1910 and 1920, the population soared from 8,000 to 40,000. Also, during the early 1920s, the school system expanded; one feature of the expansion was the creation in 1922 of a junior college that would later develop into Midwestern State University, the premier small liberal arts institution in the state.

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