Gregg County Texas map
32.49° N · 94.82° W · County seat: Longview · 275 sq mi
Gregg County is the smallest county in East Texas — 275 square miles, small enough to drive across in half an hour — and it holds 124,239 people, more than any of the large timber counties around it. The reason is under it: the north end of the East Texas oil field, the discovery that turned Longview and Kilgore from railroad and farm towns into a boom district in the winter of 1930–31.
Longview fills the middle of the county with I-20 running along its south side. Kilgore is at the bottom of the map, Gladewater at the northwest corner where the Sabine River bends.
Where Gregg County is
The county was carved out of Upshur County in 1873 and named for John Gregg, a Texas district judge and secession delegate who became a Confederate brigadier and was killed near Richmond in 1864. Its four neighbours are Upshur County to the north, Harrison County east, Rusk County south across the Sabine River, and Smith County west.
Longview is 30 miles east of Tyler on I-20, about 62 miles northwest of Nacogdoches on US-259 and SH-149, and roughly 125 road miles east of Dallas. The Sabine River forms most of the southern county line; beyond a strip of bottomland along it, the county is rolling sandy upland with almost no surface water — only 2 of its 275 square miles.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population in county (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Longview (county seat, part) | City | 79,396 |
| Kilgore (part) | City | 10,091 |
| White Oak | City | 6,225 |
| Gladewater (part) | City | 3,784 |
| Lakeport | City | 975 |
| Clarksville City (part) | City | 768 |
| Easton (part) | City | 469 |
| Warren City (part) | City | 315 |
Six of the eight places straddle a county line, which is what happens when a county this small fills up. Longview's city total in the 2020 census was 81,638, the balance lying in Harrison County; Kilgore reaches south into Rusk County and Gladewater and Clarksville City north into Upshur. Only White Oak and Lakeport sit wholly inside Gregg County.
Roads and rail
- I-20 – crosses the county east–west along the south side of Longview, with exits for Kilgore, Estes Parkway and US-259; Shreveport is about 60 miles east, Tyler 30 miles west.
- US-80 – the older parallel route, through Gladewater, White Oak and downtown Longview toward Marshall.
- US-259 – the north–south spine, up through Longview toward Gilmer and Daingerfield, south through Kilgore toward Henderson and Nacogdoches.
- US-271 – joins US-259 north of Longview and runs on to Mount Pleasant and Paris.
- SH-31 – west out of Longview toward Kilgore and Tyler.
- SH-42 – the short link from Longview southeast toward Elderville and Tatum.
Longview exists because of the Southern Pacific line laid through in 1870, and rail still matters here: Union Pacific yards on the south side of town, and the Amtrak station on Pacific Avenue where the Texas Eagle stops between Marshall and Mineola, with connecting coach service south toward Houston. The East Texas Regional Airport lies south of the city off US-259.
The East Texas oil field
The field was found in October 1930 by the Daisy Bradford No. 3, a well Columbus Marion Joiner drilled on a Rusk County farm south of the county line after several failures. Two more wells settled the question of how big it was: the Lou Della Crim No. 1 came in near Kilgore that December, and the Lathrop No. 1 near Longview in January 1931, more than ten miles apart, showing the reservoir ran under the whole district. It became the largest oil field found in the United States outside Alaska, and the flood of production from it collapsed the price of crude and led the state to enforce production quotas through the Railroad Commission.
Kilgore took the boom hardest. Derricks were built shoulder to shoulder on lots downtown, and the block still called the World's Richest Acre once carried more than twenty of them; a group of steel derricks has been re-erected on the site, lit at night. The East Texas Oil Museum at Kilgore College tells the field's story, and the college is also the home of the Kilgore Rangerettes, the drill team founded in 1940.