Robert Gilmour LeTourneau

The Handbook of Texas says LeTourneau moved his operations to Longview in 1946 and built a steel mill there to supply his assembly plants. He also founded LeTourneau Technical Institute that year, and his foundation financed it until 1961. After he sold his earth-moving business to Westinghouse Air Brake in 1953, his plants turned to logging, construction, mining and oil-drilling equipment, and he became known for mobile offshore drilling platforms. The Handbook calls him God's Businessman, and says he gave 90 percent of his company stock to the foundation.

What the plaque says

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (November 30, 1888 - June 1, 1969) A native of Richford, Vermont, Robert G. LeTourneau built his first industrial plant in Stockton, California, in 1921. A self-educated man, he invented and pioneered the use of components now standard in many types of construction equipment. The LeTourneau Company, manufacturers of equipment for heavy construction, mining, logging, land clearing, and offshore oil drilling, eventually operated plants in California, Illinois, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. Much of LeTourneau's personal time, energy, and fortune were spent in promoting the LeTourneau Foundation and Charitable Ministries, a worldwide Christian missionary effort he founded in 1935. During World War II, seventy percent of the earth-moving equipment used by U. S. Armed Forces was built by the LeTourneau Company. Following the war, R. G. LeTourneau moved to Longview, where he opened an industrial plant and founded LeTourneau Technical Institute, the forerunner of LeTourneau University. LeTourneau became an influential business and civic leader in Longview, and was instrumental in much of the city's economic development. He was the recipient of many high honors, and is remembered as a highly-regarded citizen of Longview. (1989)

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 — 22 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 — 22 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

• Site of Harmon General Hospital — steps away
• Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• Big Inch Pipeline — 1.1 mi
• Longview Junction — 1.9 mi