Hobbs came into existence on January 28, 1910, with the opening of a post office named for the pioneering Hobbs family. For nearly two decades, the town remained isolated and inconvenient, a difficult place for settlers to wrest a living from the land. All that changed, however, when the Midwest Refining Company (now Amoco) began drilling for oil near Hobbs on October 12, 1927. Soon the plains area was the stage for one of the great oil booms of the West. November 8, 1928, marked the No. 1 well's depth of 4,220 feet producing 700 barrels of oil per day.