Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in New London, TX

New London is a small city in northwestern Rusk County in East Texas, at the junction of State Highways 42 and 323 about ten miles northwest of Henderson.

The original townsite, later called Old London, was settled around 1850, supposedly by English settlers; its post office took the name London in 1855, and a school district was established in the area in 1877.

London survived on cotton and vegetable farming until the East Texas oilfield was discovered around 1930, when a booming new community sprang up about two miles from the old townsite.

The new town became New London in 1931 because Kimble County already had a London post office; that same year the Humble Oil and Refining Company made it a district headquarters and relocated about 100 families there.

Oil wealth made the London school district the richest rural school district in the nation, funding a roughly $1 million school campus — and the school property itself produced twenty oil wells.

On March 18, 1937, natural gas that had leaked into the space beneath the London junior-senior high school ignited — apparently from the spark of a shop-class sanding machine — and the explosion leveled the building minutes before the school day ended.

The New London school explosion killed nearly 300 students and teachers and remains the worst school disaster in United States history.

Because raw natural gas was odorless in 1937, the disaster pushed Texas to require that a foul-smelling odorant, mercaptan, be added to natural gas — a safety practice prompted by New London that is now standard everywhere — and to license the people who install gas lines.

The school was rebuilt and reopened in 1939 on nearly the same site; it operates today as West Rusk High School, and a granite cenotaph memorial and the London Museum preserve the memory of the victims.

New London was not incorporated until 1963, by which time its population had already dropped below 1,000; the 2020 census counted 958 residents.