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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1930s, East Texas was hit by two shocks at once. The Great Depression was squeezing farms and towns across the country. Then oil was discovered in the East Texas field, one of the largest oil finds in American history. Kilgore went almost overnight from a quiet farm-and-railroad town to one of the most famous boomtowns in the nation.
The boom drew people faster than any town could house them. Men came looking for work on the rigs, and families came behind them, many with nothing but what fit in a car or truck. Derricks went up in backyards and on downtown lots. Housing, water and sanitation simply could not keep pace.
At the national level, the federal government was building its answer to the Depression. New Deal programs paid for roads, schools, libraries and parks, partly to create jobs and partly to leave towns with lasting public buildings. Kilgore had a front-row seat to both stories: a private oil rush and a public building effort happening on the same streets.
People & events
This ground was once a tent city. As the marker records, thousands of people pushed out of their old lives by the deepening Depression camped here, hoping the oil field would give them a fresh start. Picture rows of canvas, cook fires, mud after the rain, and families living next to strangers who had come from all over the country.
City officials decided to tackle the growth instead of just putting up with it. In 1934 they picked this site as the center of an ambitious public works program, turning a crowded camp into a planned public park. The plan included a great deal of rock work, the kind of patient handwork that marks many parks from that decade.
The project did not happen in isolation. According to the marker, its planning was shaped by other federal New Deal projects going up in Kilgore at the same time, including the Kilgore Public Library and the Kilgore College Administration Building. Local ambition and federal example worked together. By about 1936 the park was finished, and the tent city had become a lasting piece of town.
Its place in the American story
Two of the biggest forces of 1930s America meet on this spot. The East Texas oil boom helped make Texas oil central to the national economy, and its rapid growth pushed state and federal governments into serious arguments about regulating production. The New Deal, at the same time, was changing what Americans expected their governments to build for them.
Kilgore shows how those forces played out at street level. A boom can make a town rich on paper and still leave thousands of people sleeping in tents. The park was a civic answer to that gap: an attempt to bring order, dignity and shared public space to a place that had grown by accident.
The pattern was repeated across the country in that decade, as communities used public works to turn hard times into stone walls, shelters and green space that outlasted the crisis. Many of those parks are still in use, and this one is part of that national legacy.
If you visit
Take a slow look at the stonework. Rock walls and structures from the New Deal era were usually built by hand, and up close you can often see the care in how each stone was fitted. Try to picture the canvas tents that once covered this same ground.
Kilgore is a rewarding stop for anyone curious about the oil boom. The town is known for keeping steel derricks standing downtown as a memorial to the boom years, and the East Texas Oil Museum on the Kilgore College campus tells the story of the field in depth. Pairing those with this park gives you both the private rush and the public response.
Kilgore sits in the piney woods of East Texas, so it fits easily into a road trip through the region's small towns and oil-country history. Check local sources for current park details before you go.
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 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
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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
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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.
First Presbyterian Church
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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.