Luling: Oil, Pumpjacks & Watermelon

Luling was a rough railroad town on the San Marcos River, and it might have faded like a hundred others — until August 1922, when a wildcatter named Edgar B. Davis brought in the Rafael Rios No. 1 and opened the Luling oil field. The boom saved the town, and Davis, an eccentric who believed his strike was providential, poured his fortune back into it before dying nearly broke. That legacy still defines Luling: the working pumpjacks scattered through town are famously painted as cartoon characters, the barbecue is legendary, and every June the Watermelon Thump crowns the county's other cash crop. This driving loop threads the oil story, the painted pumps, the old mill on the river, and the festival that keeps the town on the map — and reaches out to a strange, beautiful state park at the end.