KRUPP, HAYMON (1874-1949). Haymon Krupp, merchant and oil wildcatter, the son of Abraham and Malka Krupp, was born in Kozno, Lithuania, on March 14, 1874, one of thirteen children. In 1890 he immigrated to El Paso, Texas, where he worked in a dry-goods store and soon opened his own men's clothing store. In 1910 he established a large dry-goods house that became widely known throughout the Southwest. He pioneered what is now El Paso's outdoor clothing industry with one of the first clothing factories in the Southwest. He became renowned for giving thousands of dollars in coal to the poor in El Paso and West Texas. In the 1920s he donated funds to build B'nai Zion Temple in El Paso. El Paso and Texas honored him by naming him "Most Distinguished Citizen of El Paso" and "Most Useful Citizen in Texas" and by enrolling him in the El Paso Hall of Honor.

Krupp joined Frank Pickrell, also of El Paso, to buy a lease option to drill for oil on University of Texas lands in the Permian Basin.^qv In 1919 Krupp and Pickrell organized the Texon Oil and Land Company, with Krupp as president and Pickrell as vice president. They capitalized Texon by purchasing three producing wells in Burkburnett and selling 685 certificates of interest in New York. On May 28, 1923, their first well, the Santa Rita No. 1, came in on their leased university-owned lands in West Texas (see SANTA RITA OIL WELL). Krupp married Leah Silverman in 1899, and they had three children. After her death he married Rebecca Goldstein (1933). He died on February 21, 1949.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Chris P. Fox, "Tribute to Haymon Krupp," Password, Winter 1970. New York Times Magazine, May 3, 1925. Natalie Ornish, Pioneer Jewish Texans (Dallas: Texas Heritage, 1989). Martin W. Schwettmann, Santa Rita: The University of Texas Oil Discovery (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1943; rpt. 1958). Julia Cauble Smith, The Early Development of the Big Lake Field, Reagan County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, 1988). Texas Legislature, House Journal, February 28, 1949.

Natalie Ornish