Kilgore TX - March 27, 2010
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Leaving Pensacola, we passed through Mobile AL, Hattiesburg MS and Jackson MS, before reaching Vicksburg for an overnight stop. (There’s more on Vicksburg in the Mississippi section.) The following night was spent in Tyler TX after driving across Louisiana and whiling away several fine hours in Kilgore TX.
The attraction for us in Kilgore was the East Texas Oil Museum:
This museum tells the story of the drastic changes that occurred in east Texas when oil was discovered in the Depression years of 1930 and 1931.
Those hectic times may seem incongruous for that period but they really happened. For us --- and probably for every visitor to this museum --- the most entertaining part is the re-created, full-scale boom town. Vividly portrayed in this re-creation is the miserable state of the streets when heavy rain fell, which in those years it did:
This central part of the Boomtown scene is surrounded by stores of the era: a gas station, barbershop, bank, newspaper office, drug store, cinema, general store and feed and seed store, among others. Visiting this place is a real step back in time and a photographer’s delight. Doesn’t that mud look real? (Wet though it looked, it felt like solid rock.)
This sleepy fellow awakened at our approach and related how hard he worked and with such little time off!
The barbershop was a beehive of activity
but Patty had her sights on the general store:
Disappointed at the antiquated stock in that store, she decided the nearby fresh fruit was just as good:
