Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Midtown Kilgore, TX

Kilgore is a city in Gregg and Rusk counties in East Texas, located where Interstate 20 and U.S. Highway 259 converge south of the Sabine River.

Kilgore was founded in 1872, when the International-Great Northern Railroad built its line between Longview and Palestine, and a post office opened the following year.

For decades Kilgore was a declining cotton town — by the middle of 1930 its population had dropped below 500 and many businesses had closed.

The discovery of the surrounding East Texas oilfield in the fall of 1930 transformed Kilgore into a boomtown almost overnight, and the city incorporated in February 1931 as its population swelled toward 12,000.

At the height of the boom there were over 1,100 producing wells within the city limits, and part of one downtown block held the greatest concentration of oil derricks in the world, an area known as the "World's Richest Acre."

The boom grew so unruly that in August 1931 Governor Ross Sterling ordered martial law in the Kilgore area to bring production and order under control.

Kilgore College was established in 1935 at the height of the oil boom, and its campus is home to the East Texas Oil Museum.

In 1940, teacher Gussie Nell Davis created the Kilgore College Rangerettes, the world's first precision dance drill team, who still perform annually in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In 2003 the Texas Legislature officially designated Kilgore the "City of Stars," after the lighted stars that top its oil derricks during the Christmas season.

Kilgore was the childhood home of famed classical pianist Van Cliburn, who moved there at the age of six.