Luling's Painted Pumpjacks

The story

In August 1922, wildcatter Edgar B. Davis struck oil on the Rafael Rios No. 1 well after six consecutive dry holes—allegedly after consulting psychic Edgar Cayce and drilling where he liked the wildflowers. The discovery tapped into a twelve-mile-long field in shallow Edwards limestone, turning Luling into an instant boomtown. Because the oil sat directly beneath the town grid, landowners threw up rigs anywhere they could fit a drill bit: backyards, commercial side lots, church parking lots, and right alongside the railroad tracks.

When the major oil companies eventually packed up and left, hundreds of mechanical 'nodding donkey' pumpjacks remained scattered across downtown Luling [1.3.3]. Rather than trying to disguise the industrial clutter, the Luling Chamber of Commerce commissioned local artists to convert the working pumps into kinetic folk-art sculptures. Because the wells were still pulling crude from the earth, the up-and-down motion of the pump arms provided built-in mechanical animation.

The result is a town-wide installation where heavy machinery doubles as oddball street theatre. You'll find a plywood shark in the Dollar General parking lot that chomps its jaws over a tiny fish with every stroke, a quarterback passing a football in the First Baptist Church lot, a butterfly flapping metal wings near the train tracks, and a girl eating a watermelon slice—a direct salute to the town's annual Watermelon Thump festival held every June.