Monahans is a city in and the county seat of Ward County, Texas, United States. A very little portion of the city extends into Winkler County. The population was 6,953 at the 2010 census. In 2018, the population was estimated at 7,669.

The Permian Basin, home to Monahans and Midland-Odessa cumulative statistical area, is 250 miles (400 km) wide and 300 miles (480 km) long; Monahans is “The Center of the Permian Basin”. The basin was formed during the Permian period, the unadulterated portion of the Paleozoic era. At the time, it was an ocean filled taking into account abundant aquatic life.

In 1583, Spanish speculator Antonio de Espejo crossed this area on his artifice through present-day New Mexico. The Indians in the Monahans region were called vaqueros by these Spanish explorers because they hunted the “hump-backed cattle” or bison. Records of Spanish exploring the Los Medanos (the sand dunes) outside Monahans can be traced to the early 1770s.

Located in a region where indigenous Comanches, Mescalero, and Lipan Apache Indians subsequently roamed, Monahans’ history as a community extends back up to the late 1880s considering the spread of the Texas and Pacific Railway across the South Plains. For the few people thriving in West Texas, the building of a transcontinental railroad through the Place meant the dawn of civilization. In the summer of 1881, Texas and Pacific Railroad contracted when surveyor John Thomas Monahan, who discovered that the nonexistence of water for the laying crew and their animals would slow all along construction of the rail. Monahan’s digging of a water capably produced an abundance of good water (250,000 US gal (950,000 L) a day) and was instrumental in the achievement of the city. Prior to this solution, water had to be hauled to the Place from huge Spring, Texas.