El Paso to Fort Stockton – 8 February, 2023

Fort Stockton is a small town located in Pecos County. It is one of the most prolific producers of oil and gas in Texas. n 1921 a “miracle well” was discovered. Since then, over 710 million barrels of oil have been produced from this area. The drilling of natural gas followed. Today petroleum is the single most important asset of Pecos County.

We arrived at the Honey Badger RV park, quite late in the afternoon. It was like an open gravel area accommodating about 20 RVs. Besides the hook up there was nothing else except a few statues here and there. Luckily this didn’t really affect us, as we didn’t need any other facilities. After settling in we took Jax for a walk along the main road but didn’t see anything of interest.

The following day we drove a little further down the main street to the visitors center where I got a map of historic Fort Stockton. We then walked through the historic area looking at the old school houses, court house, hotel, churches etc. It was very interesting, especially when we learned that the town had started as a Fort to protect the San Antonio to El paso mail route, cattle drives etc. We had a look at the Comanche springs which were a large reason the Fort was built in the first place. It is now just a small stream alongside the town’s swimming pool.