Oil & Ranching is the newest exhibit located in the Mary Belle Macy Gallery at the National Ranching Heritage Center (NRHC) on Texas Tech University Campus in Lubbock. The exhibition will be open for public viewing through August 2023 during normal museum visiting hours.
In collaboration with the Petroleum Museum and the Haley Library in Midland, this exhibit explores the benefits of oil production to ranchers on land that was previously used solely for livestock while presenting some of the challenges of running both operations on the same land. Artifacts, historical pictures and documents will tell the story of the discovery of oil and how it affected land use across the country.
“Prior to the oil boom in the early 1900s, most of the land in the West was grassland used for raising livestock,” said Scott White, Helen DeVitt Jones Endowed Director of Collections, Exhibits and Research. “The discovery of oil creating new income opportunities for people who previously had only relied on some form of agriculture as their sole source of income.”
In areas such as the Permian Basin, water supplies were difficult to establish. The ranching industry was oftentimes an economic gamble dependent on scarce rain and drought-beaten grass. It was the discovery of oil on those harsh lands that changed the fortunes for those early settlers. The pact between early ranchers and oilmen created the huge wealth that built modern-day Texas.
