New London School Explosion

The Handbook of Texas puts the explosion at 3:05 p.m. on March 18, 1937, during a PTA meeting, the day before an interscholastic meet. It counts approximately 298 dead among about 500 students and 40 teachers in the building. Wikipedia gives 295, with an estimate of 294; the plaque's 311 includes later deaths of the injured. The school had switched to cheaper residue gas to save about $300 a month, and the gas had no smell. Parents, oilfield workers and neighbors dug through the rubble overnight in the rain, and the site was cleared in seventeen hours.

What the plaque says

New London School Explosion New London School Explosion on March 18, 1937, a massive explosion destroyed the New London Junior-Senior High School, instantly killing an estimated 296 students and teachers. The subsequent deaths of victims from injuries sustained that day brought the final death count to 311. The explosion was blamed on a natural gas leak beneath the school building. Within weeks of the disaster the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring an odor to be added to natural gas, which previously was odorless and therefore undetectable. This memorial to victims of the explosion was erected in 1939. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — steps away
  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.
• 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.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 22 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.
• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 22 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Overton — 3.1 mi
• Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church — 3.6 mi
• Pleasant Hill Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Joiner No. 3 Daisy Bradford — 4.3 mi