Kilgore, Texas
An Oil Boom Town
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4040933 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William T Chambers (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1933 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 72 |
| Publication date | 1933-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economic Geography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0095 • E-ISSN: 1944-8287 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/140803 |
| OpenAlex | W2317228796 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
A STRIDE the eastern boundary of the great East Texas is Kilgore, a thriving boom city which evolved in response to recent development of the petroleum industry there. Under the abounding stimulation of gusher field exploitation, the place grew from an agricultural village into an aspiring city of several thousand inhabitants within a few weeks. Public improvements secured during the first year include a city government, city hall and jail, street lights, water and sewer mains, a police force, a fire department, many new streets, a block of paving in the business district, and several new public schools. There is an active chamber of commerce, a retail merchants' association, an energetic Lions club, a progressive daily newspaper, an American Legion post, a charity association, a high school football team, and other characteristic urban organizations. Rows of attractive new business structures house a variety of retail stores, shops, and cafes; and there are hotels, garages, printing shops, and many professional businesses. An aggregation of field supply houses, lumber yards, and machine shops is located along the railway track. Residential sections are grouped about the central business district, and extend outward to the margins of the city. In general they are poorly developed, being occupied by oil field shacks, tents, and improvised dwellings of various sorts. Some attractive new homes and the frame cottages of the former village stand majestically among these tiny residences, and along main traffic routes there are cafes, grocery stores, meat markets, automobile service stations, and other small businesses. Such residential development extends outward to agricultural land on the eastern border of the city, while on the west it is interspersed with derricks, torches, separators, storage tanks, and miscellaneous field phenomena. The separator of the field is a cylindrical tank so constructed that it separates the natural gas and the petroleum as they flow from the well. Ordinarily it discharges the natural gas into a torch or flare and directs the petroleum into a pipe line
Boom · Business · Economics · Oil boom · American Environmental and Regional History · Environmental Engineering · Environmental Science
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1984 - 2016 (33) |
| Highly cited | No |