Lou Della Crim Home
Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This bungalow style residence was constructed in 1920 for Lou Della (Thompson) Crim (b. 1868), on the former site of the Hearne Hotel. The farm she owned at Laird Hill (4 mi. S) was part of an oil exploration project headed by her son Malcolm, later the first Kilgore mayor, and local financier Ed Bateman. Her property gained national attention on Dec. 28, 1930, when the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1, the discovery well for this area of the significant East Texas oil field, blew in there. Area Rangers, including the celebrated Capt. M. T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas, were housed here.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1920 on the former site of the Hearne Hotel, this bungalow was home to Lou Della Crim, whose farm south at Laird Hill became the stage for history. On December 28, 1930, the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1 blew in on her land — the discovery well for this part of the colossal East Texas oil field. As the boom convulsed Kilgore, this house even quartered the Texas Rangers, including the legendary Capt. M. T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, sent to keep order.
Why it matters
The Crim discovery well helped open the East Texas field, the largest in the lower forty-eight, whose flood of oil reshaped the state's economy and the nation's energy landscape in the Depression years.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1930 the United States was sliding into the Great Depression. In rural East Texas, farm families were struggling with low crop prices and little cash, and the piney-woods town of Kilgore was a quiet place of a few hundred people with no idea what lay beneath its fields.
Oil had already transformed other parts of Texas, beginning with Spindletop near Beaumont in 1901. But many experienced geologists doubted that East Texas held much oil at all. Independent operators and wildcatters, often working with little money and borrowed equipment, kept drilling anyway.
In the fall of 1930, a well near Henderson came in, and wildcatters suddenly suspected something big. Then, at the very end of the year, came the well on Lou Della Crim's land, and it became clear that this was not one small pool but part of an enormous field stretching across several counties.
People & events
Lou Della Crim was a widow in her sixties when this bungalow was built for her in 1920, on the spot where the Hearne Hotel had once stood. She owned a farm a few miles south at Laird Hill, and that farm became part of an oil exploration venture led by her son Malcolm Crim and local financier Ed Bateman.
On December 28, 1930, the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1 blew in on her property. It was the discovery well for the Kilgore area of what would prove to be the vast East Texas oil field, and it made the family name known across the country. Within weeks, Kilgore was overrun by drillers, speculators, workers and fortune seekers, and derricks rose wherever there was ground to put them.
The boom brought chaos as well as wealth. Overproduction sent oil prices crashing, and lawlessness followed the crowds. Texas Rangers were sent in to restore order, and some were housed right here in Mrs. Crim's home. Among them was Capt. M. T. Gonzaullas, the 'Lone Wolf,' one of the most famous Rangers of the twentieth century. Malcolm Crim, meanwhile, went on to become Kilgore's first mayor, as the boomtown organized itself into a city.
Its place in the American story
The East Texas field was the largest oil field ever found in the lower forty-eight states, and its discovery during the Depression reshaped the American economy. So much oil poured out so quickly that prices fell to pennies a barrel, and the struggle to bring production under control led to new state and federal efforts to regulate how much oil could be pumped.
Those battles helped establish the idea of regulating oil output to stabilize prices, an approach that influenced the energy industry for decades. In the years ahead, East Texas oil would also be an important part of the nation's fuel supply during World War II.
This modest house puts a human face on that story. National energy history often sounds like a tale of corporations and governments, but here it began with a widow's farm, a son with ambitions, a local backer willing to gamble, and a family home that briefly became a base for the lawmen sent to tame a boomtown.
If you visit
The house itself is a good example of the bungalow style that was popular across America in the 1910s and 1920s, with its comfortable, low-slung lines. It was built as an ordinary family home a decade before the boom, which makes its brush with history all the more striking.
Kilgore wears its oil heritage proudly. Downtown, steel derricks still stand as reminders of the days when wells crowded the city's streets, and the East Texas Oil Museum at Kilgore College tells the story of the boom in vivid detail. Together with this home, they make the 1930s feel surprisingly close.
If you are touring East Texas, consider making Kilgore a stop alongside the region's other oil-boom towns. Driving south toward Laird Hill gives you a sense of the rolling countryside where the Crim well came in, and of how quickly quiet farmland was transformed.
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
- · Lou Della Crim
- · Malcolm Crim
- · Ed Bateman
- · M. T. Gonzaullas
Related events
- · Discovery of the East Texas Oil Field
Themes & tags
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