MCCAMEY, Texas — The saying goes, McCamey is so small, they had to borrow a horse to even be considered a "One Horse Town."
However, coming up on its 100th year of being in the Permian Basin, the town encompasses its entire past to create the best future for a small Texas town.
It's a town of less than 2,000 people. That includes City Secretary Patty Jones, who is the former mayor.
She proudly claims that McCamey is the "best little town in Texas."
Jones knows a great deal about McCamey, like how it got its start and name 99 years ago in 1925. All thanks to their founder, George Burdette McCamey.
"Him and two of his business partners discovered oil here, discovery well number one," Jones said. "They set up shop, got workers in, and in order to get the equipment delivered by rail, he painted his last name on the side of a box car, pushed it off to a side rail and that's how McCamey got its name."
The town began to boom just like the oil industry, with a population of over 10,000 people at one point. However, as you'd expect, it also faced the busts, too.
"We've weathered the ups and downs of the oil fields," Jones said. "We've been through recessions, we've been through depression, we've been through everything, storms, tornadoes, you name it. We just seem to build back."
Many of the buildings never needed to be built back up. They have stood the test of time by holding the history of how they came to McCamey by rail.
“Probably in the 30s or 40s, one of our streets still has some of the Montgomery wards or Sears kit houses that were delivered by train that are actually still standing and in use," Jones said. "You literally ordered a house for like two hundred dollars from Sears and they've delivered it to you on a train.”
One of the homes that was delivered is the Adrian House. Along with many others in town, like Jones' home. Her home is about 80 years old. They all display a tangible connection to what once was.
Think of it like walking into a time capsule.
"Not just in stories or something you can flip through your phone and read, but to actually see the physical items, to be able to go into one-hundred-year-old building and have it represent the work that was done before," Jones said. "I think the preservation is vitally important to a town's history."
It's not just the 80-year-old homes where you can walk into the city's history, there's also the McCamey Museum. It's a road map to all the city has seen, including its history on race.
According to Jones, The Dunbar School is the town's historically black school from before segregation and it is still standing. Jones also mentioned that Ms. Nora was one of the very first teachers in the entire school system.
Of course, there's room for an urban legend or too. For McCamey, that's Panzy, the trapeze artist.
"Panzy was injured and stayed in McCamey." Jones said. "She became one of our local unique characters. She pulled a little red wagon around wherever she went."
That same little red wagon sits at the museum with other artifacts from Panzy's life.
Two blocks over, people will find two more buildings that open the door to more of McCamey's history.
The first is a girl scout hut built by the community, by hand, in the 1930s out of locally sourced rock.
Right next to it, is the new and improved McCamey ISD Administration Building, which was built in 1925. After 98 years, it recently got a makeover. That's because the people who live there still want to preserve the McCamey they grew up in.
"We had part of the town that wanted to tear it down, that it wasn’t worth saving," Jones said. "But there were a lot of us that stood up and said that building can be rehabbed, and it can stand another 100 years."
With only one school district, everyone can remember what it was like to be a badger and climb the famous "M" mountain, which was lit on fire as a homecoming tradition.
"We would go up every year, clean off all the mesquite the weeds that came up, re-white wash it, reline it, line it with coffee cans that were circled with cardboards, fill it with kerosene and the shop guys would light it on fire when homecoming game started," said Jones.
The "M" still sits high looking over the city alongside dozens of wind farms that give McCamey its official name: The Wind Energy Capital of Texas.
“Back in the 90s, we were one of the very first commercially functioning wind farms to go online in the United States," Jones said.
Who would've thought, a town that was founded on oil and gas now dominates in wind and solar. It continues a trend of hard workers with that strong West Texas grit.
"That's one of the things I love about it," Jones said. "We keep an eye on the future, but we also want to honor our past, want to want to honor the people that came before us, that built McCamey."
With a beautiful blend of past and present and a tremendous amount of growth in the works, who knows, maybe one day McCamey will be lending a horse instead of borrowing it.