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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the late nineteenth century, East Texas was a land of piney woods, small farms and railroad towns. Kilgore was one of those towns: modest, agricultural and organized around the rail line. Like many Southern communities of the era, it did not yet have a strong public school system, so education often depended on private teachers, church-affiliated academies and classes held in people's homes.
The early 1900s brought a statewide push for public education in Texas, and towns across the state began forming independent school districts with their own taxes and buildings. Kilgore's district formed in 1906, and its new red brick school of 1913 reflected the steady, small-town growth of the period.
Then everything changed. In 1930 oil was discovered in the East Texas field, which proved to be one of the largest oil fields ever found in the lower United States. Kilgore stood near its heart. Within months the town filled with drilling rigs, oil workers, families and businesses, and its population rose far faster than any town could plan for, all in the middle of the Great Depression.
People & events
The story begins with Isaac Alexander and his Alexander Institute, a private school that moved to Kilgore in 1873. For about two decades it was where the town's children learned, a clear sign of how much small Texas communities relied on private educators before public schools were common. In 1894 the institute moved to Jacksonville, and it eventually grew into Lon Morris College.
Kilgore did not let go of its schoolhouse. The building the institute left behind became a public school, and when the Kilgore Independent School District was organized in 1906 it kept using that building. In 1913 the district put up a new two-story red brick school on this Longview Street site, a solid building meant to serve the town for years.
The oil boom cut those plans short. Once oil came in around Kilgore in 1930, families poured into town and classrooms overflowed. Less than twenty years after the red brick school was built, the district tore it down in 1932. In 1933 it opened a much larger combination high school, junior high and auditorium on the same site, and later added an elementary school, turning the block into a campus for the whole growing city.
Its place in the American story
Kilgore High School is a small window onto one of the great economic upheavals in American history. The East Texas oil field helped make Texas a global energy power and shaped the oil industry for decades. Stories about the boom usually focus on wildcatters, derricks and fortunes, but towns like Kilgore also had to find room for thousands of new children.
The school's history also follows the national shift from private academies to public schooling. A town that once depended on a private institute and classes in parlors built a tax-supported district and then a modern campus. That same change was happening across the country in the early twentieth century, as communities came to see public education as a basic civic duty.
Most strikingly, Kilgore built its big new school in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, while much of the nation was cutting back. The building shows how a boomtown chose to put its unexpected prosperity into its children, an investment that has outlasted the boom itself.
If you visit
The marker stands at the school site on Longview Street, which is still in use as part of Kilgore's school system. Be respectful of students and staff, and admire the campus from public areas. Picture the same spot holding a converted private academy, then a red brick schoolhouse, and then the larger 1930s building that replaced it.
Kilgore wears its oil heritage proudly. Downtown, look for the steel derricks that recall the days when wells crowded together in the middle of town. The East Texas Oil Museum, on the Kilgore College campus, is a natural next stop for understanding the boom that reshaped this school.
Kilgore makes a good stop on an East Texas road trip through the piney woods and the old oil-field towns. Before you leave, take a minute to think about how a single discovery could fill a town's classrooms almost overnight.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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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
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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.
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