Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in McCamey, TX

McCamey is a Permian Basin oil boomtown in southwestern Upton County that sprang up almost overnight after wildcatter George B. McCamey brought in the Baker No. 1 oil well in September 1925.

The town took its name from a hand-scrawled sign on the boxcars McCamey parked on a Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway siding to warehouse drilling supplies.

Within six months of the oil discovery, McCamey was a dusty tent-and-frame city of an estimated 10,000 people, and it incorporated on December 27, 1926.

Drinking water was so scarce in early McCamey that it was hauled in by train from Alpine, almost 100 miles away, at a cost of $1 a barrel, until a pipeline from a better source 17 miles away was built in 1929.

The Humble Oil Company refinery that operated in McCamey from 1927 to 1932 was one of the first refineries in West Texas.

Shell Oil's 1928 attempt to store surplus crude in a giant earthen tank designed to hold a million barrels failed when the limestone underneath cracked under the oil's weight and the crude leaked away.

The Texas Legislature has declared McCamey the "Wind Energy Capital of Texas" because of the many wind farms built in the area.

The 2020 census counted 1,831 residents and 693 households in McCamey — a fraction of its 10,000-person boom peak, though it remains an oil-producing town on U.S. Highway 67 about five miles east of the Pecos River.

McCamey has a hot semi-arid climate with only about 15 inches of rain a year, and its record high temperature is 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Mendoza Trail Museum, opened in 1966 and named for Spanish explorer Juan Dominguez de Mendoza, preserves McCamey's frontier and oil-boom history.