"It was just shacks all along this side of town, tired and lonesome-looking, and lots of us wasn't needed here no more. Oil derricks running up to the city limits on three sides; silvery refineries that first smelled good, then bad; and off along the rim of the horizon, the big carbon-black plants throwing smoke worse than ten volcanoes, the fine black powder covering the iron grass and the early green wheat that pushes up just in in time to kiss this March wind. Oil cars and stock cars lined up like herds of cattle. Sun so clear and so bright that I felt like I was leaving one of the prettiest and ugliest spots I'd ever seen." Woody Guthrie, "Bound for Glory"

Prohibition-era Pampa found itself in the throes of the oil boom, drawing in huge numbers of men to work in the oil fields, and new businesses to profit from the growth. Pampa also incubated the musical, artistic, and literary skills of America's foremost folk legend, Woody Guthrie.

Woody came to Pampa in 1929, a teenager of seventeen years, and left it in 1936, a married man with children and an artistic vision. His music was formed in the throes of a booming and busted Pampa--and unlike virtually any other oil boomtown in America, you can walk Pampa's streets today and still see why.

The shotgun shack that Woody lived in on Somerville Street south of U.S. 60 still stands in a garishly painted row of shabby cottages. The solid brick buildings and lavish Million Dollar Row of downtown Pampa still attest to a community that planned on thriving forever. Unvarnished, Cuyler Street in downtown Pampa--where Woody worked from 1930 to 1935--is boarded up in places, but as authentic and gritty as it ever was.