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Gallup's Map of Texas: Gallup c. 1922

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  • Title: Gallup's Map of Texas
  • Author: F. E. Gallup
  • Date: c. 1922
  • Medium: Printed with some hand coloring and manuscript additions
  • Condition: Very Good - issued folds into paper wrappers each 4.2 x 6.5", with light wear and soiling, on a clean sheet with several tiny splits at fold junctions and a 4" edge tear at top that has been closed on verso with archival tape. Faint offsetting and a few tiny edge tears and chips confined to the blank margins.
  • Inches: 29 x 20 [Image]
  • Centimeters: 73.66 x 50.8 [Image]
  • Product ID: 319010

One of the earliest Texas maps devoted to the oil and gas industry. Very rare map of Texas focused on early oil and gas exploration and infrastructure in the state. Locates gas and oil fields by symbol in red overprinting. Various pipe lines between the fields and refineries also shown. A few fields in south-central Oklahoma are included along with insets of the panhandle and southernmost Texas with a gusher illustration.

A similar map marketed by the M.H. West company with identical base printing copywritten by Gallup is known.  That is a later map as the instant example does not identify the Zapata field, while the M.H. West map does.  Zapata was discovered in 1919 and commercially drilled in the 1920’s.  Dating the map is quite challenging as it appears to skip some discoveries.  The 1917 discovery of the Ranger Field in Eastland County, the Burkburnett Townsite Field in Wichita County (1918), the Mexia Field in Limestone County (1920) and the Luling Field in Caldwell County (1922) are on the map.  However, the 1919 Zapata County discovery in the Mirando Valley and the sensational 1921 oil and gas discoveries in Borger are not identified.  Perhaps in a rush to publication, expediency was chosen over accuracy. 

The Gallup map publishing firm was founded ca. 1875, and today is one of the 15 oldest continuously operating firms in Kansas City, Missouri.  Presumably Gallup’s earlier effort seen here was later licensed to M.H. West in Dallas to meet the voracious demand for oil related intelligence.  OCLC lists two additional oil exploration related maps of the region by Gallup; Map showing location of leases owned by Mid-Continent Oil, Gas & Refining Co. in Brewster Co. Texas, and the Tri-state oil map Kansas-Oklahoma-Texas: with portions of Old and New Mexico showing all oil and gas fields and main pipe lines.  While the dreamers believed a hole punched anywhere in the Lone Star state would spout oil, many a successful wildcatter would find these maps indispensable.

References:  Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas History, 2021; ibid. Texas Almanac, 2020, Clark and Halbouty, The Last Boom, Random House 1972.

Rarity: OCLC lists copies at Yale, Stanford, Columbia and Texas A&M.  At least two copies in private collections.