Oil: Boom Then and Now
Cisco has ridden two great oil waves: the gusher boom of 1917 that filled its hotels, and the fracking boom of the 2000s, when a fracking company run from Cisco grew into a multibillion-dollar business.
The Ranger strike, 1917
In October 1917 the McClesky No. 1 well came in at nearby Ranger, producing about 1,700 barrels and setting off a rush to the county.source Eastland County's population jumped from 23,421 in 1910 to 58,508 in 1920, and the county's wells produced 22 million barrels in 1919 alone.source
Cisco wasn't the center of the drilling, but it became a crowded crossroads for everyone chasing it. Some boom-time estimates put the town at 15,000 people. The 1920 census counted 7,422, still the most in Cisco's history.source The crowds explain why a hotel like the Mobley could rent its beds in shifts, and why the town dreamed big enough to build the Big Dam.
By 1930 the county had shrunk to 34,156 people as the boom faded.source
Frac Tech: a Cisco company that went global
Brothers Dan and Farris Wilks grew up in Cisco, where their family settled in 1953, and worked as masons in the family trade.source In 2000 a Texas partnership called T.H.C. Gas was registered; in 2002 it took the name Frac Tech Services. Its registered address is in Cisco.source
Frac Tech pumped the high-pressure fluid that cracks open shale rock, the process known as hydraulic fracturing. The company did something unusual: it built its own fracturing units at its plant in Cisco. In 2008 alone the plant turned out 100 of them, and the company's headquarters stayed in Cisco.source
In 2011 an investor group led by Singapore's Temasek and RRJ Capital, alongside Chesapeake Energy, bought out the founders' majority stake.source Forbes valued the deal at about $3.5 billion, with about $3.2 billion going to the Wilks brothers, and soon counted the two Cisco brothers among America's newest billionaires.source
From Cisco to Wall Street and back
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2000 | Partnership registered (as T.H.C. Gas); renamed Frac Tech Services in 2002, with a Cisco addresssource |
| 2008 | Cisco plant builds 100 fracturing unitssource |
| 2011 | Founders' majority stake sold in a deal worth about $3.5 billionsource |
| 2018 | Now named FTS International, the company lists on the New York Stock Exchangesource |
| 2020 | Restructures through Chapter 11 and emerges two months latersource |
| 2022 | Acquired by ProFrac, a company led by the Wilks familysource |
Still built in Cisco
Drive along I-20 and you'll pass the reason oil is still part of Cisco's present, not just its past. As of 2020, ProFrac ran a 130,000-square-foot manufacturing plant on more than 20 acres in Cisco, plus a 60,000-square-foot distribution building.source
A century after the Ranger gushers, Cisco is still an oil town. These days the oil work happens in its factories as much as in its wells.