[Music] [Travis] When you cannot only see but feel the community band together for each other, there is no denying the hope you have within.

Many people would have walked away from this West Texas town, but not the people of Monahans.

The love and vision they have for their community is inspiring.

[Music] [Frame Click] [Music] The future of Monahans will continue to change.

But a few things make up the heart of this community.

They've stayed true to their roots.

The early families like the Hunts, the Holman's, the Dunagans and the Vests.

Some have moved away, but they have left a piece of their heart here, and the people of Monahans are forever grateful for the mark they left on their community, and they will continue to keep the passion for the area in mind as they evolve with the times.

[Music] [Ellen] But here we have photos.

We have the stories.

So you're not going to know.

There was a courthouse in Barstow.

You're not going to know that.

You're not going to know how hard those people worked or how that came.

You're not going to know about Mr. Barstow being a land promoter and everything, and that he came from Rhode Island to Barstow.

Texas at the in 1904, you know, to promote the land would certainly helped our County develop and grow and to be here in everything, and so it's just all of those things you eventually I mean, the Coca-Cola bottling plant is still there, the newer version, um some of the cocoa lettering on it, but sometimes not.

But eventually you wouldn't you wouldn't know that.

You know, um it's just all of these things go to how your community came to be, how it came to grow.

Maybe how come it doesn't flourish today uh based on what happened.

But even things where it is the the Rattlesnake Bomber Base and all those brave men and women um that went through there that went over and many of them gave their lives and we lost a lot of lives here because they're just they're flying and whatever reason to crash into the side of a mountain or something like that.

So we have documented and there is documented in the Air Force records a number of plane crashes maybe not here, but in the Fort Davis Mountains or in the mountains, at Van Horn or something.

But they're planes that were stationed here and they were doing their fly.

And, you know, whether there's mechanical problem or what happened, I don't know.

But but those men lost their lives, you know, So there's just so much that goes back and then it goes on to the country because that's World War II and everything.

So it's not just it's Monahans history, it's not just it's Ward County history.

It's its also part of the history of the United States and how this country came to be.

I think why it's a great country.

I think why we have the freedoms that we have.

Um So I just think it's really important that the stories are shared um and that the history is maintained, and again, extremely grateful to all those who came before us here in Ward County and in Monahans that started saving this history.

You know, the Holman House, which is a beautiful house when you go in it the architects did a wonderful job.

Um But if, I mean, you can look at how it came.

It would have rotted into the ground.

It just wouldn't be here.

So it's just maintaining those things and being able to share those stories.

And we're extremely fortunate here that the County is the one over this museum and the court has um been willing to fund things um when we need to make improvements here.

And the second thing is, is that the City of Monahans has been so gracious for a number of years now to let us have hotel motel taxes, which can be used for the uh preservation and um maintenance of historic items and everything.

[Greg] We have now a tremendous uh number of opportunities that we didn't have um 15 or 20 years ago.

Um For one thing, we have hotels that we didn't have uh when we first came to Monahans in ‘97, um there weren't any modern hotels.

We had two or three uh hotels that had been here for a long time, uh and we have a great number of hotels along the interstate now.

So uh that has certainly changed.

And then certainly within the community, um we've uh built a lot of facilities, a lot of opportunities for things that we didn't have in the past.

And so um while the population uh makeup has certainly changed um the the town and the community and and the county uh really have come a long ways in terms of developing opportunities for for folks to do things that they really didn't have before, um were we're really blessed with a uh strong mineral base and that has allowed us to do some things that we couldn't have done otherwise.

And so uh there are more opportunities now uh for recreation, for events, for things of that nature that that we didn't have in the past.

[Todd] I've seen a lot of growth in Monahans commerce wise.

Of course, Monahans is an is an oil field town and and tied to the growth of the oil field, and uh I've seen lots and lots of service companies come in to Monahans, and we've been fortunate enough to be between the big place, the Midland, Stanton area, oil play and then the or the Mentone Pecos area.

So a lot of companies have come based out of Monahans.

And so we've seen a lot of growth of commerce.

We've we've uh I had an older gentleman tell me that I saw the original pictures of some of the original booms that we had, that there were tents around all these cities, and they said now all of our tents have wheels on them.

Weve got our RVs, uh where we had tents, but we've had a lot of people, lots and lots of people from all over the world move in here, and that's that's the interesting there's some really good to it and there's some roads are a little more crowded than I want it to be some days, but it's been good.

The Butterfield Stagecoach Festival started in 1994 uh by a group of gentlemen that they were into wagons and stagecoaches and stuff, and and they they knew that that route came through here and they wanted to have something to kind of honor it, commemorate it, and and I started it was a great it's still ongoing.

This was the 29th year when they started out.

They had a big wagon festival.

A lot of wagons came in, had a had a big two day bull riding and a kids bull riding.

So it was a big event.

It's still a nice event for the community.

The wagon festival just, I think by attrition, a lot of people are not into that anymore.

It's kind of faded out, but uh the festival has continued on.

Although I served as a committee member for many years, had a lot of fun with that, and it was it's a great uh community event, draws a lot of folks in and there's still something for our community to celebrate.

I felt like it was important to be on the Battlefield committee, um just to be part of trying to help honor a little bit of our history uh that this wasn't even that widely known really until till we started having the festival and then people became more aware of the route through and uh and for the modern time, too, to help generate a little economic commerce for the community.

If you think about it, it started in 1994.

We were still in pretty tough times around here, so it was a good time to try to generate some economic activity and it did that.

So it served its purpose.

Some of the activities that happened in Monahans that that kind of show the heart of the community, that bring the community together.

A couple of things that I can think of off the top of my head is, is this community supports their school district like crazy.

And as I as I kid folks when I'm out from Texas, away from Texas, I'm real close to where Friday Night Lights happen in the film, so when there's a sporting event going on in Monahans, uh so that's where people are going to be when there's a Friday night football game, that's where folks are going to be.

It just like most of Texas.

Uh, another thing that's highly supported in in this area is our Ward County Livestock show, and my family's been a part of that for we're in their fourth generation being part of that.

But uh that's a big, um big community event as well, um.

We've got a lot of good things going on in this community that draw them together.

Those are the things that I can think of.

But there's many more.

- Growing up in Fort Stockton, uh there was a rivalry always with Monahans.

So every time we visited Monahans, it was always sports related, uh UIL, academics, something like that.

So very welcoming.

Uh, the people of Monahans have been phenomenal, uh, definitely.

that was the first impression.

Life revolves around the school.

I mean, that that's the the the pulse of the city.

And so the school district, we've done great things.

You know, there's been some major renovations here at the school.

It's great buzz.

We have great staff uh and we have some really good parents that are very involved.

Um, so that thats the core of the town.

And uh again, the County, the the role that they play, we have a really great County government uh elected officials that have made some very wise decisions on planning.

Uh, and you can see that uh with the event center, the event center park, uh the renovation of this museum complex, the um ball fields, the arena, all of those things have really uh helped the betterment of the community.

Uh, it just it adds something whenever you're driving down the interstate, you know, when you when you live here and you see these things on a daily basis, you become numb to them very quickly.

But it's great to hear somebody that is passing through or, you know, you're friends with and they drive by and they're like, wow, you know, that place is nice.

We went to an event at the Event Center that is a really nice facility.

And it and it and it serves a great purpose.

I mean, it brings the community together in a way that we hadn't been able to before.

- My hope for the future of Monahans and Ward County is is uh sustainability uh as I said, this is a whole lot like sand hills.

You have your ups and your downs.

It's constantly moving.

The sand is blowing.

We're in a pretty good time right now.

We're at the top of the sand hill, if you will.

I've seen it when we've been in the valley and uh your hope is to cut the valleys out.

- Yeah.

So the energy industry, I mean, that's the the driving force of the Permian Basin.

I mean, the foundation was laid with course ranching, uh agriculture.

Pecos River was a huge source for for farming.

Uh.

But as those resources were depleted, uh you know, the the finding of uh petroleum products out here, your natural gas and your oil were tremendous.

You know, every city in West Texas is, I mean, directly tied to the oil and gas industry, hands down.

I mean, everybody either works in the oil and gas industry or indirectly works in the oil and gas industry.

Uh and so that has been just I mean, it's it's allowed our county to flourish uh and provide things that other small towns, you know, that might not be able to provide.

And so it's very, very, very thankful to live where I do today and for the oil and gas industry.

[Jeppie] When I when I was growing up in Monahans, it was really a small town that pretty much took care of its own and had everything.

But back in the day, wow, we had three big lumberyards.

We had three great big um uh large size a grocery stores.

I remember it was Fehrs, Safeway and M System back in the day, and we had several I can't even name them all, maybe a town this size, maybe eight or nine or ten mom and pop type stores like Pay and Save, Andys Grocery, which is just the place, the location of it, I can see it now.

It's just a couple of two or three blocks from here.

But we were blessed.

I mean, in fact, our downtown area was so prosperous that back in that day, this was before the malls of course, because of the shopping malls, it kind of destroyed downtowns.

Uh, and I don't know if that's good or bad, but still, back in the day, there were people who would actually come to Monahans from Midland Odessa to shop because our our downtown shopping area was so convenient.

Everything was just right there, clustered there in the center of town.

And it was, oh I can remember this too, back in the uh in the even as far as the middle eighties, you would actually walk downtown Monahans and have to turn to the side as if you were on a sidewalk in downtown Dallas.

Oh, I'm sure it wasn't that way all the time, but especially at Easter, Christmas.

Thanksgiving.

Oh, especially Christmas.

Wow!

I mean, it was amazing.

And you bump into people.

Hey, I'm sorry.

I'll talk to you later.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to get in front of you.

I mean, it was amazing.

So many people.

[Rena] That is a hard one, because everybody's going to brag on their community But I do think the fact that we are family oriented and that most families are raising children and they're still active in church and in sports and in all their activities, that their children are in, so I really think it's family orientation has really helped bring things together.

I just love it here.

I love our church.

I love our community.

I love the service organizations we belong to.

And even though our children are grown and gone now, it's still home to us.

[Angelo] I enjoyed being apart of that help you know, that was like when my father, and old man Bill Vest of course, I'd ask him a thousand questions and he'd always answer me.

It kind of brought his back to memory, you know, and he's always telling me something when wes a ridin.

[Laughs] He said, he asked him how come we come out here?

He said he followed his brother.

You brother come out and hold steady and and he said “I will go with him ” says, got out here says Ask him, why his brother left, thats what it was and he said, oh hes kind of on the dodge, [Laughs] he kinda done somethings around Richmond Springs and said, hell he got out here says literally everybodys on the dodge.

[Laughs] Huh - You had relationships with all the the business folks in town uh and that's what really um helped us.

Whenever we first moved to Monahans, we had several folks uh just extend a warm welcome to us and uh whatever we needed help uh personal, uh business wise, they were just extremely welcoming to us.

My wonderful big brother Nathan Sawyer, uh decided to uh throw me to the wolves right off the bat.

Uh.

He had already joined the Chamber of Commerce and was a member of the chamber.

I had not been, so I was still living in Fort Stockton, uh commuting back and forth, trying to find a place to live, and so this is in probably May of 2007.

Brother calls me and says, hey, I'm going to be out of town.

I need you to do me a favor.

He said, you're going to get in, get in contact with Theresa Burnett You're going to pick up some paint from her and meet at the Million Barrel and the incoming seniors, so the grad or the junior class uh is going to meet you out there and they're going to paint their names on the Million Barrel wall.

All you have to do is provide the paint.

You're out there for 20 minutes, tops.

I said, perfect, I can do that.

I yet I might have met Theresa Burnett a couple of times before that, but definitely did not have the relationship that I do now with her.

So drive out here.

It's probably 10:00 in the morning and I show up early.

I sit there a back, my pickup up, lower the tailgate, set the paint out, and they're supposed to be here at a certain time.

All of a sudden I can hear all these vehicles coming.

uh I guess school had been dismissed and all the vehicles start pouring into the Million Barrels.

So it is all 17 year old boys and girls coming in to the Million Barrel.

Uh, again, I'm probably 24 25 at this point so not a whole lot older than they are.

And uh so they come in and uh I was also told that there was going to be some school personnel there to help this well, they were, that's where I was going to hand it off to.

I was going to hand it off to the school personnel.

So I'm standing there and start divvying up paint pouring it into uh the cups, handing out brushes.

Well, they start asking questions.

They say, where can we paint?

And nobody had told me that.

So I said, uh paint on the wall.

I I don't know.

Uh.

And again, I don't know any of these kids, don't know these kids don't know these kids parents don't know the tradition of this.

All I can see is that there is on every wall out here, there's paint.

Somebody has done this in the past.

So they asked me if they could bring their own paint.

I said I couldn't see why not.

So kids go get their own paint.

About that time, there were some school personnel that showed up uh and it was lunch time at this point, they come down and say, hey, I introduce myself to them.

And they said, well, looks like you have this under control.

We're going to go have lunch.

So everybody leaves.

So again, I'm 23, 24, somewhere in there in charge of probably 120 130 17 and 18 year old kids.

Uh, so when I say good charge its very loosely, uh so I'm watching them paint, you know, having a good time, no big deal, um.

Then of course, it starts getting a little rowdy.

Uh, a suburban drives in loaded full of boys.

Uh.

The Suburban starts trying to drive up the side of the Million Barrel.

Uh Not very successful.

It looks like you can, but I'm pretty sure a bumper was hanging low after they were, once they left, because they just could not try to climb, or they were not successful at climbing up the side of it as I go, okay, things are kind of getting out of control a little bit, but again, not my job.

Uh then next thing I know, a motor home drives into the Million Barrel with a kid driving it with kids on top of the motor home.

There was water from rain.

Somehow there was water in the bottom in.

Uh.

These boys are trying to do donuts in a motor home and the bottom of the Million Barrel.

And the heh I'm thinking to myself, like, what did I get myself into?

I know this is not supposed to be happening, uh but I'm we're too far gone at this point.

And uh so finally gets to hot kids leave.

Uh.

There's a mess to be cleaned up.

So I clean up the mess.

Um.

Theresa shows up and uh I could tell she was not exactly excited at what she saw, uh.

Heh.

She asked, uh you know, what happened?

Who else was here?

Uh And I said, is pretty much myself.

And uh she said, okay.

Um.

And a couple of months later, I learned that that was the last year that the incoming seniors would be allowed to come out to the Million Barrel and paint their names up there.

So concern of mine was new to town uh and I right off the bat helped eliminate a tradition that had been going on for some time.

I don't know how long it been going on, but uh, yeah, that was that was not the best moment ever.

- I began serving as a Ward County Judge in October of 2006 and uh continue to served in that office now for about 17 years.

In Misdemeanor Court, we we often refer to it as as Night Court because it it seems an an awful lot like an episode of Night Court a sometimes, and so we've had lots of lots of funny things happen in a court.

A, one time I I came into the courtroom uh and there was a courtroom full of people uh waiting for court, and I came in to sit on the bench, and one of the defendants who had arrived for court that day was laying in the in the floor up near the bench, um and I looked at him as I walked by and the bailiff said, Judge, he's got a back problem, he has to lay down.

And I said, okay.

So I went and sat on the bench and we just began court and uh started calling the cases, and people stepped over him as they came back and forth until it was his turn and then we took care of his case.

So, [Laughs] Monahans is one of those places that it seems there are a lot of stories of people who came with the intention of staying only for a short while uh and then stayed for a long period of time.

Um.

When I first came to Monahans working with the church, I had the opportunity to visit with lots of older folks in the community, and I kept hearing the same story over and over again.

I would hear people talk about um how they came to this area with the intention of being here for six months or a year or two years, and then they had been here for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 plus years.

Um, and, you know, that's kind of what happened with us when um I uh was talking with the church here about coming to Monahans.

Uh, as I was interviewing, one of the the men asked how long we would stay if we came to Monahans.

And I said, well, we'll we'll commit to trying to stay at least five years.

And his comment was, if you stay five years, your children will be Little Lobo's and you'll never leave.

[Laughs] And that's pretty much what happened.

Our our kids uh started school in Monahans as as I mentioned, uh the week after we moved here, the the twins began kindergarten and uh we've had kids in the schools ever since.

[Rex] The main challenge is budgeting each year.

We're in the budget process right now.

Um I I've seen years where we came out of the 2018 came out of two great years.

Um The the city decided it was time we could get some new equipment.

Uh, you get in the middle of getting all this new equipment and oil goes down $65 a barrel in a month.

And uh that's a challenge because you don't expect that it's still going to pay for everything you're doing and uh, -So Monahans has changed um primarily due to the uh, you know, the ups and downs of the oil and gas uh booms and busts.

Uh.

Naturally, when things are going really well or when the booms are taking place, when uh activity is strong, we like all of the communities around us.

We get an influx of workers, uh temporary workers and people coming in and out.

Um, the local entities work well together, and we have cooperated together to to uh do a quite a few projects uh in recent years.

I see that continuing.

Uh I believe that will continue.

Um I think that we will continue to receive people as a result of of oil and gas and and people that come for opportunity.

And so I would like to see the the community continue on the path that it's on.

In Ward County we've we've worked hard to um use the tax dollars that we have, primarily property tax dollars, almost exclusively property tax dollars um to increase the quality of life, to increase opportunities for folks who come to live here.

And um we've uh done that through a kind of a no nonsense pay as you go approach.

Uh Ward County has not had any debt in over 30 years, uh and yet we've accomplished a lot of projects um by doing that, doing them with cash, um.

We're blessed to have a strong mineral tax base.

And so we have been able over the years to uh save money when we have excess and tighten up our belts when we don't, uh and ride the ups and downs of of the of the oil and gas booms and busts.

But through that process, we've been able to uh build event centers and community centers and libraries and golf courses and airports and museums and swimming pools and parks, and just a lot of different things that we've done to try to, uh again, provide for those folks, those folks who come to our our difficult climate for the tremendous opportunity uh we tried to provide for them uh some opportunities to uh have uh good recreation, good opportunities for events and things of that nature.

Recently, Ward County was identified as being the number one county in Texas uh for getting value out of property tax dollars, uh and we're proud of that.

We've worked hard to uh maintain a level uh tax rate for our homeowners and at the same time to be able to use the tax revenues from the mineral base uh to provide some opportunities uh to those that live here.

- And we've been able to maintain uh some finances in the bank to to, you know, hold us when oil is negative per barrel.

At one point, it was less than zero per barrel.

People were paying to put it someplace.

And that is when uh we watch things very closely, can't screech to a halt.

Everything still has to happen.

You still got to get good water in town, bad water out of the houses, trash out of the houses.

That's still got to happen.

So - Well, I mean, I'm just excited about the future.

I think that that Monahans and Ward County has a great future ahead of them.

Um, and, uh you know, we have a lot of projects in the works.

We have um, you know, new schools being built.

We have uh facilities being built across town, um we always have people arriving in this area for the opportunity that exists.

And I think that if we work together, we're able to accomplish a lot of great things.

And uh so far we've been able to do that and I certainly look forward to the future.

- Monahans has become home for so many.

As families grow, children move away to pursue their education, but something unique is unfolding.

People are trading the life of the big city to come back to Monahans The Chamber of Commerce, the municipality, the oil industry, tourism to the state park, the rodeos and the education system has all played an important part in one way or another for the growth and stability of this community, something this community has not taken for granted.

If you ever went to visit Monahans, you will be welcomed with genuine Southern hospitality that will be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

I'm Travis Sawyer and thank you for joining us on our journey through Monahans The Center of the Permian Basin.

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