DIAL, TEXAS (Hutchinson County). Dial, also known as Gulf Dial, is on Farm Road 2277 southeast of Stinnett in central Hutchinson County. It was named for the Dial Ranch, on which it was established in 1925, when the Gulf Oil Company drilled its Dial No. 1 well, the first in the county north of the Canadian River. By 1926 a sizable oil town, complete with a post office, rose on the site. The improvement of highways and transportation facilities, however, which ended the oil subsidiary-camp system, led to the town's demise. By 1976 the post office had been discontinued. In the 1980s several wells at the site were still in production. Dial had a population estimated at eighty from 1968 to 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. D. Bartlett, "Discovery of the Panhandle Oil and Gas Field," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 12 (1939).
