With much of the world's focus on Ukraine, some interest in the West Texas city of Odessa has piqued. The University of Texas-Permian Basin's (UTPB) Michael Frawley told Midland CBS affiliate KWES that more than 6,000 miles separate the Permian Basin from Ukraine, but the two places have a historical link.
KWES reported that while there are no official records as to how Odessa got its name, its origins may be traced to Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in the region more than a century ago to help build railroads.
Frawley, associate professor of history and dean of student success at UTPB, told KWES that it's common knowledge that Odessa began as a railroad town.
The immigrants who worked on the railroads, including those from Ukraine and Russia, simply engaged in hard, yet steady labor Americans didn't want to do.
“So the standard story is that Odessa was founded as a railroad town, as a stopping point, on one of the big Texas railroads that was being built across Texas at that time," Frawley said, according to KWES. "The story is that there were a lot of Russian/Ukrainian immigrants working on the railroad at that time, and they thought that the plains of West Texas looked a lot like the plains of back home, and so the name Odessa started to be used for this area.”
Frawley said the immigrants fell in love with the area to where they called their tiny railroad camp "Odessa" as a steadfast reminder of home across a continent away.
Contrary to popular belief, Odessa, Texas and Odessa, Ukraine don't have a sister city relationship.
“We think about this globalization as a relatively recent phenomenon, but Texas has always had a global reach," Frawley told KWES. "Texas has always been important to the geopolitical scene. And it’s just really interesting to see how throughout our history, we’ve had these. And if you go across Texas you will find stories like this of different immigrant groups and different settlers and how connected and how small the world really is when you’re looking at stuff like connecting Odessa, Texas and Odessa, Ukraine. Like, it’s just phenomenal that these connections have existed for so long.”
KWES reported that Odessa Arts lit the Odessa Spire in the colors of the Ukrainian flag in support of the country.
“Our namesake city is going through an unimaginable humanitarian crisis," Odessa Arts executive director Randy Ham told the station. "Our hope is that by seeing our Spire lit in the national colors of Ukraine, it will encourage our residents to donate to humanitarian agencies like The Red Cross to get help to those who need it most."