Gushing About Kilgore

When oil roared skyward from the Lou Della Crim No. 1 well on December 28, 1930, Kilgore went a little crazy. Virtually overnight, the Depression-battered cotton town became the busiest anthill in East Texas. Men swarmed in by the thousands to look for oil and to work for those who had already found it. Eventually, more than 1,100 oil wells pumped away within the city limits, including a plot called the World’s Richest Acre because it had the greatest concentration of derricks in the world. Currently, one original and 12 restored derricks punctuate the tract of land.

Now, nearly eight decades after the boom, restored derricks looming over Kilgore testify that oil is still the center of the universe here. About 200 pumping wells remain in the town, sprinkled everywhere from golf courses to schoolyards. Most of the city’s jobs are still oil-related, as are the attractions that bring in visitors.

Oil built Kilgore College, the city’s centerpiece, and the college gave birth, with the help of the legendary Hunt family, to the East Texas Oil Museum, whose dioramas, films, and fascinating oral histories “capture a moment in time,” as director Joe White puts it.

The college also created the world-famous Kilgore Rangerettes, the best-known college high-kick team in the nation, along with a museum telling the team’s history. It’s also responsible for the popular summer Texas Shakespeare Festival, whose first production, 22 years ago, was about—what else?—the oil boom.

Oil is even the reason Kilgore can claim classical pianist Van Cliburn as a favorite son. Cliburn, who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, moved to Kilgore as a child, because of his father’s job with Magnolia Petroleum.

About the only aspect of Kilgore’s history without an oil connection is its Elvis Presley sightings. The King came over from his Louisiana Hayride gigs in the mid-1950s to occasionally sing on KOCA radio, with local girls paid to scream in the background.

A modern-day visit to Kilgore should begin with a look at its skyline: restored oil derricks stand like sentries off Commerce Street near Kilgore’s 1872 rail depot. There are approximately 60 derricks scattered about town, each topped with a big star, lit during the holidays.

Kilgore’s oil story is illustrated at the East Texas Oil Museum, which tells how this area was changed forever in October 1930, starting with a gusher at the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well in Rusk County, 13 miles south of town. Two months later, the Lou Della Crim No. 1 came in.

Helen “Pudge” Griffin, who was a child living in nearby Longview at the time, heard all about the influx of men from her late husband, James H. Griffin, who grew up in Kilgore. “Everybody rented every spare room they had. They were living in boxes, anything they could find,” Griffin says. Kilgore’s population of some 800 people swelled to more than 10,000 within days. Oil rigs and derricks sprouted up everywhere there wasn’t a building.

See the full article in the June 2008 issue.

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