Longview, TX (Gregg County) (2024)

Longview, the county seat of Gregg County, is on Interstate Highway 20 and U.S. highways 80 and 259, about 125 miles east of Dallas in eastern Gregg and western Harrison counties. In the early 1990s it was the largest city in Gregg County. Its current boundaries include three leagues of land granted to Anglo-Americans late in 1835. There was no significant settlement of the area, however, until the 1840s and 1850s. What became Longview consisted of mostly hilly land in the southeast corner of Upshur County, devoted more to small farms than to large plantations. Before the Civil War there were, within what are now the Longview city limits, two rural communities with United States post offices: Earpville in the east and Pine Tree in the west. A Methodist congregation at Earpville, dating back to 1846, later became the present First United Methodist Church of Longview. Today's Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church was chartered in 1847.

The town of Longview itself was founded in the early 1870s, when the Southern Pacific Railroad (later the Texas and Pacific) extended its track from Marshall in Harrison County westward into Gregg County. The railroad bypassed Earpville and laid out a new town a mile to the west on land purchased from Ossamus Hitch Methvin, Sr. Railroad management called the new settlement Longview, reportedly because of the impressive view from Methvin's house, which was on what is now Center Street. A post office was established in January 1871 before regular rail service to the town began. Due to financial problems the Southern Pacific delayed further track construction for two years, and Longview became the western terminus of the railroad. Wagons from throughout East Texas journeyed to the town, which quickly developed as an important regional trading center. A commercial district, composed of hastily built wood-frame buildings, sprang up around the terminal.

On May 17, 1871, Longview incorporated, the first community in Gregg County to do so. Earpville disappeared from the map, but Pine Tree endured as a recognizable community, known later as Awalt, then as Willow Springs, and finally as Greggton before being annexed by Longview in the 1960s. During its early years the city was dominated by Republican party interests. Among the early opponents of the Republicans was James Stephen Hogg, who established, then discontinued, a triweekly newspaper during a two-month stay in Longview in 1871. In its first years Longview was a rough railroad town; violence was common, and nearly half of the town's businesses were said to have been saloons.

Despite its rough character, however, there were already signs in the early 1870s that the town was developing into a more established city. In 1873 a weekly newspaper, the Longview New Era, began publishing. In 1872 the International Railroad (later the International-Great Northern), built a connection between Longview and Palestine. The railroad joined the Southern Pacific about a mile east of the Longview depot, and the area became known as Longview Junction. A third railroad, the Longview and Sabine Valley, began construction from Longview Junction in 1877. As the railroads furthered the economic transformation of the region, seven new counties were established in northeastern Texas by the fragmentation of long-established larger counties. In 1873 a county centered geographically and politically on Longview was proposed; it was to take pieces from Upshur, Rusk, and Harrison counties. Longview became the county seat. When the Rusk portion turned out smaller than hoped and the Harrison part proved unattainable, Longview was left very near one edge of a small and peculiarly shaped Gregg County.

During the 1870s and early 1880s the town grew rapidly. Partly due to a major fire in 1877, the original frame buildings of the commercial center were replaced with structures of brick and stone. By 1882 Longview had Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Christian churches, as well as three sawmills, two schools, a bank, a planing mill, a cotton gin, a foundry, a machine shop, a street railway, an opera house with a seating capacity of 450, and three weekly newspapers-the New Era, the Surprise, and the Democrat. At that time the estimated population was 1,525.

The area around Longview Junction also developed into a small commercial center, and a street railway running along Fredonia and Methvin streets operated between the two depots. Longview Junction was annexed to the city in 1904. From 1882 until after World War II, the city's main industrial plant was the Kelly Plow Company, a very substantial agricultural equipment factory. The town's population grew steadily during the last years of the 1800s. By 1910 it had reached 5,155. The Longview Electric Light and Power Company began supplying electricity around 1895; the first municipal waterworks was installed in 1904; and a sanitary sewer system was installed around 1910. In 1903 the Graham Manufacturing Company built a large crate and box factory for farm produce next to the Kelly Plow Company. The Port Bolivar Iron Ore Railroad Company, formed in 1911, built about thirty miles of track north from the Junction as part of an unsuccessful plan to develop Ore City.

Between 1910 and 1920 the population growth slowed, and in 1920 Longview was a rural cotton and lumbering center with an estimated 5,713 residents; African Americans made up 31 percent of the population. Racial tensions, which had long been simmering beneath the surface, erupted into violence in the Longview Race Riot of 1919. Black residences and businesses were burned and one African-American man was killed several miles west of Longview. During the 1920s cotton prices fluctuated and timber supplies dwindled, leading to economic uncertainty for Longview. However, a paved highway, later known as U.S. Highway 80, was built through the town, and the population increased by nearly 2,000 during the decade. By 1929 the city had more than 7,000 residents. The Longview Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1916, promoted the city with an aggressive advertising campaign. A Rotary Club was organized in 1920. In 1926 Longview became the headquarters of the newly founded East Texas Chamber of Commerce. In 1929 the Texas and Pacific Railway moved its division offices to Mineola, and nearly 700 families moved away. By 1930 the population of Longview had dropped to 5,036, slightly lower than its population in 1910. The discovery of the rich East Texas oilfield in the early 1930s, however, saved the town from the harsh economic effects of the Great Depression. Located several miles outside the oilfield, Longview was spared the worst aspects of boomtown chaos but was able to capitalize on its position as the established business center and governmental seat of Gregg County. The city was transformed from a sleepy cotton, lumber, and railroad town populated largely by natives to a thriving commercial and industrial city dominated by mostly Southern newcomers. The population more than doubled during the 1930s, to 13,758 in 1940. That same year the town reported 750 rated businesses. Burgeoning tax receipts allowed city and county officials to build numerous new government structures and schools, including a new county courthouse in 1932.

In 1942 construction began on the Big Inch pipeline, which originated in Longview (see BIG INCH AND LITTLE BIG INCH). From February 13, 1943, through August 31, 1945, this pipeline transported more than 261 million barrels of crude oil to the East Coast for refining. This ensured an uninterrupted supply of gas and oil during World War II. Concerted efforts to attract diversified industries to Longview during the war and for twenty years thereafter were led by Carl Lewis Estes, newspaper publisher. During World War II the federal government built a large hospital complex, Harmon General Hospital, just outside of Longview. After the war, Robert G. LeTourneau opened a large manufacturing plant for earth-moving equipment, and he acted with other civic leaders to turn Harmon General Hospital into LeTourneau Technical Institute. In 1950 Eastman Kodak Company chose a site near Longview for its new subsidiary, Texas Eastman Company, which became the largest chemical complex in inland Texas. Other developments during the immediate postwar period in the greater Longview area included Gregg County Airport and Lake Cherokee. In 1966 a Schlitz brewery and an associated container factory were built in Longview; the beer plant later became the Stroh Brewery, the largest in Texas, producing 4 million barrels annually.

During the 1940s and 1950s the population of Longview grew steadily, from 24,502 in 1950 to 40,050 in 1960. The city's growth was fueled by a growing migration from rural areas of Gregg County and by the annexation of neighboring Greggton and Spring Hill. More recently the Longview metropolitan area has spread east into Harrison County. The city population reached 45,547 in 1970 and 62,762 in 1980. In the early 1990s Longview was an important regional industrial and medical center. The city is served by the Longview, Pine Tree, and Spring Hill independent school districts, each having a major high school. Longview's population in 1990 was 70,311; the metropolitan area had an estimated population of 170,200. In 2000 the population was 73,344.