Olney, TX

Olney sits in North Central Young County at the meeting of State Highways 114 and 79, a city whose map carries both oil-field and aviation history. The community moved to its present site when rail service arrived in 1909–10, then became an oil town after the Swastika Pool discovery in 1924. A 1951 tornado killed two people, injured seventy-five, and left a mark still carried in local history. At Olney Municipal Airport, Air Tractor has manufactured agricultural aircraft in Olney since 1972. The airport gives the city a connection to farm country that reaches well beyond Young County. City streets, the old oil story, and planes built outside town make Olney read as a small Texas city with a long memory and a very specific industrial calling.