Masterson, Texas

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Masterson
Unincorporated community
The Masterson Post Office was located in the Exell General Store. The building in 2013.
Masterson
Location within the state of Texas
Coordinates: 35°38′9″N 101°57′37″W / 35.63583°N 101.96028°W / 35.63583; -101.96028Coordinates: 35°38′9″N 101°57′37″W / 35.63583°N 101.96028°W / 35.63583; -101.96028
Country United States
State Texas
County Moore
Elevation 3,704 ft (1,129 m)
Time zone Central (CST) (UTC-6)
 • Summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5)
ZIP codes 79058

Masterson is an unincorporated community in southern Moore County, Texas, United States. It lies along the concurrent U.S. Routes 87 and 287, south of the city of Dumas, the county seat of Moore County.[1] Its elevation is 3,704 feet (1,129 m).[2] Although Masterson is unincorporated, it has a post office, with a ZIP code of 79058.

Founded in 1927 as a support community for Canadian River Gas' plant and gas pipeline producing the Panhandle Field.[3] Masterson was named for Robert Masterson, while the plant, Bivins Compressor station, was named after another Panhandle rancher, Lee Bivins.[4] The community eventually included 32 company houses for families and a hotel for single men.[5] The Bivins Elementary School was built in 1937 and educated children through the eighth grade, after which they attended school in Dumas, Texas.[6] Starting in 1943, helium was extracted from the gas at the Exell Helium Plant, which is located nearby and managed by the Bureau of Land Management.[7] The government built 75 houses for employee families.[8] The Masterson post office was established in 1950 and was located in the Exell Store, built in 1948.[9] The compressor station was sold to Colorado Interstate Gas (CIG) Company in 1951.[10] CIG was acquired by the Coastal Corporation in 1973,[11] which then merged with El Paso Corp. in 1999, which was bought by Kinder Morgan in 2011. Starting in 1963, the housing at both the Bivins and the Exell camps was phased out.[12] The Bivins school was closed in 1978.[13] The station was bought by Pioneer Natural Resources in 2002.

Gallery

  • Typical CIG company house at Bivins Station, 1966. This one was on 4th street. Phone number 36F4 (four rings on the party line).

  • View of the Bivins School main entrance in 1965.

  • Bivins School as seen in 1965. The section on the right was added in 1946.

  • Bivins School, 1965 view from tennis courts. The cafeteria seen in front was added in 1962 while the gymn seen in the background was built in 1954.

  • Bivins school women's basketball game, date unknown.

  • Exell Helium Plant, circa 1945, courtesy BLM.

  • Exell Helium Plant, circa 1980, courtesy BLM.

  • CIG Bivins Compressor Station and Masterson, Texas, circa early 1960s

  • Bivins Station, 2013

  • Exell Helium Plant in 2013

  • Masterson Historical Marker, 2013

Geology

The Panhandle Field is a structural trap, characterized by the Amarillo-Wichita Uplift or sometimes referred to as the buried "Amarillo mountains", which is bounded by three sedimentary basins: the Anadarko Basin to the north, the Dalhart Basin to the west, and the Palo Duro Basin to the south.[14] This tectonic uplift occurred in the Late Mississippian to Early Pennsylvanian time and was sufficient to expose and erode the Precambrian granitic and rhyolitic basement complex forming a granitic wash, which was subsequently submerged and buried by marine sediments in the Permian (specifically, the Wolfcampian carbonates).[15] The granitic wash and these marine sediments form the pay zones but the "gas, oil and water cut across formational boundaries".[16] The Wolfcampian marine sediments include an arkosic lime, an arkosic dolomite, the Moore County Limestone, the White Dolomite, and the Brown Dolomite.[17] The Leonardian Panhandle Lime, or Wichita, and Red Cave overlay these Wolfcampian sediments, with the anhydrite and dense-dolomite nature of the Wichita forming the reservoir seal.[18] The source for the oil,gas and helium accumulations are the sedimentary rocks of Pennsylvanian age in the Palo Duro and Anadarko Basins.[19] The helium would have been derived from uraniferous rocks and radiogenic in origin.[20] The Panhandle Field has a pressure which is about 400 psi lower than the surrounding basins, which allows gases to migrate into it.[21] Although low, the pressure is a normal hydrostatic pressure relative to the water table.[22] Charles N. Gould mapped the John Ray Dome, which was drilled by the Amarillo Oil Company in 1918 resulting in the Panhandle Field discovery.[23] Drilled to a depth of 2,395 feet, the well, No. 1 Masterson C, produced 5 million cubic feet of gas per day at a pressure of 420 psi.[24] Oil in the Panhandle Field was discovered in 1921 with Gulf Producing Company's No. 2 Burnett well, producing 200 barrels per day.[25]

  • Panhandle Field[1]

  • Panhandle Field Geologic Section[2]

  • Panhandle Field Cross Section[3]

  • Panhandle Field Helium Concentration[4]


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Charles N. Gould

After founding the geology department at the University of Oklahoma in 1900, Charles N. Gould worked summers doing field work for Frederick Haynes Newell, first director of the United States Reclamation Service (later known as the United States Bureau of Reclamation), investigating "the underground water resources of a portion of the southern part of the Great Plains."[26] His first summer trip through the Panhandle in 1903 resulted in Water Supply Paper 154 of the United States Geological Survey, Geology and Water Resources of the Eastern Portion of the Panhandle of Texas, and a similar trip in 1905 resulted in Water Supply Paper 191, Geology and Water Resources of the Western Portion of the Panhandle of Texas.[27] It was during this second trip Gould "explored and prepared a geological map of Palo Duro Canyon...giving names to the formations" and "studied the anticlines along the Canadian River, indications of which he saw in 1903.[28]

In 1908, Gould became director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey and in 1916 was asked by "M.C. Nobles, a wholesale grocer of Amarillo" if he knew of "any oil and gas prospects..in the Panhandle" to which Gould replied "there appeared to be several big anticlines or domes in that region" but it "would probably be necessary to send a Plane table party into the field and prepare a detailed contour map of the area."[29] Nobles organized the Amarillo Oil Company, from ten businessmen investing one thousand dollars each, and hired Gould to survey an area that included Lee Bivins' ranch south of the Canadian River, and R.B. Masterson's ranch north of the river.[30] The resultant map showed a large dome fifteen miles in diameter with four hundred feet of relief, which Gould named the John Ray Dome after a nearby butte.[31]

The company bought oil and gas leases on 64,000 acres around this "typical oil-and-gas structure" and Gould received one-sixteenth of the acreage, plus one thousand dollars, and paid expenses for his services.[32] The nearest oil or gas was 225 miles away at the time which prompted the following speech by Gould before C.M. Hapgood drilled the company's first well, "No one knows whether or not the Lord has put any gas or oil in the Panhandle of Texas, but if there should be any oil or gas in this part of the world, this would appear to be the best place to find it. And, because this seems to be a very large dome, it is my judgement that one is more likely to find gas, rather than oil, in the first well drilled on the apex, or high point, of the dome."[33] The well encountered several gas-bearing sands over its 2,200 feet depth and flowed eleven million cubic feet a day.[34]

Gould later discovered the Cliffside Dome, near the station Cliffside northwest of Amarillo, a large deposit of helium gas, the 666 dome, the north slope of which is where the Borger Oil Field was located, and named the buried granite ridge in the Panhandle the "Amarillo Mountains".[35] Gould's philosophy, "we always told our clients, the business of prospecting for oil or gas was first, last, and all the time a gamble. No one knows in advance of drilling what will be found at any particular place. There is always risk in drilling for oil and all the geologist can do is to minimize that risk."[36]

Notes

  1. ↑ Rand McNally. The Road Atlas '08. Chicago: Rand McNally, 2008, p. 98.
  2. ↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Masterson, Texas
  3. ↑ George, p. 29
  4. ↑ George, p. 60
  5. ↑ George, p. 35
  6. ↑ George, p. 74
  7. ↑ George, p. 47
  8. ↑ George, p. 50
  9. ↑ George, p. 59
  10. ↑ George, p. 35
  11. ↑ George, p. 132
  12. ↑ George, p. 80
  13. ↑ George, p. 81
  14. ↑ Pippin, pp. 204 and 206, and Pierce et al, p. G1
  15. ↑ Pippin, p. 208, and Pierce et al, p. G1
  16. ↑ Pippin, pp. 209-210
  17. ↑ Pippin, pp. 209-210
  18. ↑ Pierce et al, p. G20-G21, Pippin, P. 216
  19. ↑ Pippin, p. 204, Pierce at el, P. G55
  20. ↑ Pierce et al, p. G50 and G55
  21. ↑ Pierce et al, P. G50
  22. ↑ Pierce et al, p. G52
  23. ↑ Pippin, p. 204
  24. ↑ Pippin, p. 205
  25. ↑ Pippin, p. 206
  26. ↑ Gould, p. 117
  27. ↑ Gould, pp. 125, 127-128
  28. ↑ Gould, pp. 127-128
  29. ↑ Gould, pp.144, 191-192
  30. ↑ Gould, p. 192
  31. ↑ Gould, p. 192
  32. ↑ Gould, p. 193
  33. ↑ Gould, pp.193-194
  34. ↑ Gould, p. 194
  35. ↑ Gould, pp. 194 and 196
  36. ↑ Gould, p. 195

References

  • George, Louise, No City Limits, The Story of Masterson, Texas, Gateway Press, 1994, ASIN: B004SZU2DI
  • Gould, C.N., Covered Wagon Geologist, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.
  • Pierce, A.P., Gott, G.B., and Mytton, J.W., Uranium and Helium in the Panhandle Gas Field Texas, and Adjacent Areas,Geological Survey Professional Paper 454-G, Washington:US Government Printing Office, 1964
  • Pippin, L., Panhandle-Hugoton Field, Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas-the First Fifty Years, in Geology of Giant Petroleum Fields, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Memoir 14, pp. 204–222, 1970.

External links

Texas State Historical Association

Bureau of Land Management

Texas Escapes Online Magazine

Municipalities and communities of Moore County, Texas, United States
Cities
Unincorporated
community
Footnotes
‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties
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