Big Inch Pipeline

The Longview end of the line was only the start of a larger project. The American Oil and Gas Historical Society says the Big Inch was planned from Longview across the Mississippi to southern Illinois and on to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, with branches toward New York and Philadelphia. Construction began in August 1942, and the last weld came in July 1943, 350 days later. A 20-inch companion, the Little Big Inch, carried refined products. In 1947 Texas Eastern Transmission, formed to bid on the government's surplus lines, bought both for $143,127,000.

What the plaque says

Big Inch Pipeline Before the United States entry into World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, ninety-five percent of the crude oil delivered to East Coast refineries was transported by tanker ships. Ninety percent of that oil originated from Texas oil fields. Beginning in february 1942, many U.S. oil tankers en route from the Gulf of Mexico to the East Coast were sunk by German submarines. Recognizing the need to transport oil under safer circumstances, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes developed a plan for massive overland oil pipeline. Under the auspices of the War Emergency Pipelines, Inc., construction began on the largest pipeline in history up to that time. Measuring twenty-four inches in diameter, the Big Inch pipeline extended from Longview to Norris City, Illinois, and eventually to refineries in the East. The Big Inch pipeline's impact on the war effort was tremendous, enabling the safe and timely transport of oil products vital to the Allies. During the height of wartime service, over 300,000 barrels of oil were delivered each day over the 1,476-mile line. When the war ended the Big Inch continued in service after conversion to a natural gas pipeline. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 10 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 21 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 21 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Robert Gilmour LeTourneau — 1.1 mi
• Site of Harmon General Hospital — 1.1 mi
• Longview Junction — 2.8 mi