Kilgore High School

The Kilgore Independent School District has a precise birth date. Its history says voters approved forming the district on August 27, 1906, by a vote of 53 to 0, and Gregg County Judge Edwin Lacy declared it incorporated. The district began with 12 square miles, entirely in Gregg County. It now covers 106.7 square miles across Gregg and Rusk counties, and the district's history lists its campuses from the high school, built in 1932, to the primary and middle schools opened in 2013.

What the plaque says

Kilgore High School Public education in Kilgore traces its history to classes held in private homes and the establishment of private institutions, most notably the Alexander Institute. Operated by Isaac Alexander, the school moved to Kilgore in 1873. It continued to serve the children of the town until 1894, when it was relocated to Jacksonville. It was later renamed Lon Morris College. The building which housed the Alexander Institute was converted into a public school. The Kilgore Independent School district, established in 1906, continued to use the facility until 1913, when a new two-story red brick school building was erected at this site on Longview Street. Following the discovery of oil in Kilgore in 1930 and the resulting oil boom, the 1913 school was soon inadequate to house the student population of the city. The red brick school was razed in 1932, and a new combination high school, junior high, and auditorium was erected on the site in 1933. An elementary school was later added to the property. This facility has continued to serve as an educational institution for the city of Kilgore, and stands as an integral part of the life of the city. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 1.1 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 — 11 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.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 23 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• Tyler State Park — 25 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Lou Della Crim Home — 0.4 mi
• The Kilgore I&GN-Missouri Pacific Railroad Station — 0.4 mi
• Kilgore — 0.4 mi
• World's Richest Acre — 0.5 mi