Kilgore High School
Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Public education in Kilgore traces its history to classes held in private homes and the establishment of private institutions, most notably the Alexander Institute. Operated by Isaac Alexander, the school moved to Kilgore in 1873. It continued to serve the children of the town until 1894, when it was relocated to Jacksonville. It was later renamed Lon Morris College. The building which housed the Alexander Institute was converted into a public school. The Kilgore Independent School district, established in 1906, continued to use the facility until 1913, when a new two-story red brick school building was erected at this site on Longview Street. Following the discovery of oil in Kilgore in 1930 and the resulting oil boom, the 1913 school was soon inadequate to house the student population of the city. The red brick school was razed in 1932, and a new combination high school, junior high, and auditorium was erected on the site in 1933. An elementary school was later added to the property. This facility has continued to serve as an educational institution for the city of Kilgore, and stands as an integral part of the life of the city. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Public schooling in Kilgore began with classes in private homes and institutions, most notably the Alexander Institute, which moved to town in 1873 before later relocating and eventually becoming Lon Morris College. The Kilgore Independent School District formed in 1906 and built a two-story red brick school on this Longview Street site in 1913. After oil transformed the town around 1930, the swelling student population outgrew that building, which was replaced in 1933 by a new combined high school, junior high, and auditorium.
Why it matters
The school's growth spurts trace how an oil boom could remake a small Texas town almost overnight, and how communities poured their new wealth into educating the next generation.
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Related people
- · Isaac Alexander
Related events
- · East Texas oil boom
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Alexander Institute
Kilgore, TX
Before Texas had public schools, private academies filled the gap, and the Alexander Institute — successor to an 1854 Masonic female academy — was among the most respected in East Texas. Named for educator Isaac Alexander, it moved to newly founded Kilgore in 1873 and soon came under the Methodist Episcopal Church, offering studies from primary grades through college and drawing students from across the region. When the school relocated in 1894 it became Lon Morris College, one of the oldest junior colleges in Texas.
St. Luke's United Methodist Church
Kilgore, TX
The Kilgore Methodist Society formed in 1873 as families moved to the new railroad town, and its early life was bound up with the Rev. Isaac Alexander, who moved his female academy here and renamed it Alexander Institute — the forerunner of Lon Morris College. After a frame sanctuary was lost to arson during the wild Kilgore oil boom of 1931, the congregation raised the Tudor Gothic fieldstone church that stands today in 1932.
Kilgore Public Library
Kilgore, TX
Kilgore's first public library opened in 1933, launched by two local women's clubs. Federal Depression-era programs made the permanent building possible — funded by the Public Works Administration and built with Works Progress Administration labor, it was completed in 1939 in a style modeled on the cottages of Normandy. It still serves the community it was built for.
Kilgore Colored and C. B. Dansby Schools
Kilgore, TX
African American education in Kilgore reached back to 1873 and its Baptist church, but in 1935 the school district built a substantial brick campus here for Black students under segregation. For nearly twenty-five years principal C. B. Dansby grew it from six grades to twelve, and the school was renamed in his honor after he died during a graduation ceremony. Dansby High served the community until Kilgore's schools finally desegregated in 1970.