The New Deal Era in Kilgore
Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After the discovery of oil here in the 1930s, this site was transformed into a makeshift tent city by thousands of people displaced by a deepening national depression. In an effort to control growth, city officials chose this site as the focus of an ambitious public works program in 1934. The park project, which included extensive rock work, was influenced by the planning and foresight of other Federal "New Deal" projects underway in Kilgore at the time (Kilgore Public Library and Kilgore College Administration Building). The park project was finished about 1936.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After oil was struck near Kilgore in the 1930s, this site swelled into a makeshift tent city crowded with people driven from home by the deepening Great Depression. Seeking to bring order to the boomtown, city officials in 1934 made the spot the focus of an ambitious public-works park, complete with extensive rock work, inspired by other federal New Deal projects then rising in Kilgore. The park was finished around 1936.
Why it matters
The site knits together two great forces of 1930s America — the East Texas oil boom and the New Deal's public-works response to the Depression — as they reshaped a single Texas town.
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Related events
- · New Deal public works program
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Allis-Chalmers Pumps
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These twin Allis-Chalmers reciprocating pumps stand as relics of Kilgore's transformation into an oil boomtown after the Lou Della Crim No. 1 well blew in on December 28, 1930, opening the vast East Texas field. Brought here in 1931 by the Shell Pipe Line Corporation to push crude toward Houston-area refineries, the pumps ran until 1985 and are estimated to have moved over a billion barrels.
First Baptist Church of Kilgore
Kilgore, TX
Five charter members founded this Baptist congregation in the small farming village of Kilgore in 1902, raising their first sanctuary in 1906. The 1930s brought the East Texas oil boom, which swelled Kilgore's population — and the church's rolls — almost overnight, prompting a new brick sanctuary in 1933. The congregation went on to help seed other Baptist churches in the region.
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.
First Presbyterian Church
Kilgore, TX
This congregation began in 1850 as the rural Gum Spring Presbyterian Church and followed its people into Kilgore by 1874. When the East Texas oil boom exploded across the 1930s—derricks crowding right up against the church lot—the flush of prosperity paid for this Gothic sanctuary, with its tri-partite arched entry and grand stained-glass window. The building marks where old-time Presbyterian piety met the frenzy of black gold.