White-Pool House

Charles and Lucy White and their two adult sons came by train with their possessions from Raysville, Indiana, bought a section of land on July 4, 1887, and within the year completed a fine house near the railroad. It was the first substantial structure built in an empty area at a time when Odessa consisted of fewer than eleven (1888) scattered, simple-frame buildings. The elegantly simple, late Victorian-style brick house, which reflected the distinguished owner's Quaker religion and which took shape from innovative adaptations of native materials, dominated the subsequent development of the area as a tribute to pioneer determination. The White family was instrumental in the initial agricultural, commercial, political, and religious development of the county. After Charles's death and after the property changed owners several times, it was acquired in February 1923 by a family that would be associated with it for more than a half-century. Oso W. Pool and his family came to Ector County in the decade of the discovery of oil, and they became prominently involved in the events that created a boom-town atmosphere and that added the eventual modernization of industrial development to the ranching base of the region. The White-Pool House remains by many years the oldest existing structure, the only example of late 19th and early 20th-century architecture, and the county's acknowledged symbol of both its frontier ranching and subsequent oil boom-town heritage.

In 1881 the Texas and Pacific Railroad laid tracks for the southern transcontinental rail line across the uninhabited desert-like Llano Estacado. To profit from the state land grant, the railroad land company promoted the area as a health resort and new farm and ranching country by sponsoring a largely unsuccessful sale of lots in 1886. Partly in response, Charles and Lucy Haughton White and their sons came to Odessa early in 1887 and built their homes.

Charles White is believed to be the founder of agricultural innovations in the county. Experimenting in a treeless land with a variety of trees, shrubs, and crops, many of which he would prove not to be adaptable, White's efforts and irrigation system were featured in photographs apparently used by the railroad for promotional purposes. White established a general mercantile store nearby, in what later became downtown Odessa, and his son Wilfred operated it as Odessa a first postmaster. When the county government was first organized in 1891, the two White's held posts, including county surveyor and election judge. Lucy White's strong religious background led her to the initial development and maintenance of a little Union Sunday School. All the White's continued to nurture the beginnings they had planted until Charles's death in 1905 and the departure of his widow and family the following year. A young veteran of World War I, Oso W. Pool, and other members of his family, came to Ector County in the early 1920s. In the first year of the oil boom, 1927, Oso married Helen Voss and helped meet the housing shortage by dividing their home into apartments and by developing South Odessa as a part of the growing town. He annexed his fifty acres to the city, platted it as the Pool Annex, and sold individual lots. The Pool Family Real Estate Company operated from the house and eventually, other rental units were built on the city block the main house by then occupied. The house and its facilities dominated the neighborhood. It is a well and holding tank that supplied the water for both houses and businesses there before such city services were supplied. Before he served as County Commissioner, Oso sold the property to his parents, William J. and Ida B. Pool, who lived there and eventually transferred it to their heirs. In 1969 the property was sold but the Pool Family retained the mortgage, and Oso again acquired it in 1977, at which time it was voluntarily donated to Ector County. The Ector County Historical Commission, as trustees, plans to restore the house to its basic original outward appearance and to furnish the inside for historic statements about the two significant eras of the county's development.