Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Iraan, TX

Iraan's name is a blend of the first names of Ira and Ann Yates, the ranchers on whose land the town was built — the name won a contest that offered a free town lot as the prize.

Iraan sprang up almost overnight after oil was discovered on the Yates ranch in 1926, creating the giant Yates Oil Field, one of the most prolific oil fields in American history; the first housing was tents, shacks, and bunkhouses.

By 1930 Iraan already had about 1,600 people and sixty rated businesses, and the Ohio Oil Company built company houses, drilled water wells, and hired teachers for a school in 1927.

Cartoonist V. T. Hamlin worked in Iraan during the oil boom and conceived his famous comic strip Alley Oop there, inspired by the dinosaur fossils of the Trans-Pecos; the strip was first published in 1932.

Iraan honors its comic-strip connection with Alley Oop Fantasy Land, a park near the Pecos River featuring large statues of Alley Oop and his pet dinosaur Dinny, dedicated in 1965, alongside the Iraan Museum.

Rancher Ira Yates donated 152 acres of his ranch to encourage Iraan's growth, which doomed the rival boomtown of Redbarn three miles south, finally abandoned in 1952 after never exceeding about 75 permanent residents.

The 2020 census counted 1,055 people in Iraan, down from 1,238 residents and 427 households recorded in 2000, as the town's fortunes have followed the oil industry.

Iraan likes to note that it is the second-largest town in Pecos County, the second-largest county by area in Texas, the second-largest state in the United States.

The town sits at the junction of U.S. Highway 190 and State Highway 349 near the Pecos River in eastern Pecos County, in the Permian Basin of West Texas.