The Coordinates series celebrates lesser-known locales worth visiting across the state.
In 1925 a wildcatter who regularly conned investors into funding half-hearted explorations of what he suspected were dry holes sweet-talked a widowed farm owner into letting him drill on her land. Unfortunately for him, the Daisy Bradford No. 3 struck black gold five years later, marking the discovery of the massive East Texas oil field. Speculators rushed to the area, and almost overnight Kilgore was no longer a struggling cotton burg. At one point, more than a thousand derricks stood within the town’s limits, including two dozen lining a block that came to be known as the World’s Richest Acre. Nearly all the structures were dismantled as the wells played out, but in the eighties some history-minded citizens banded together to resurrect Kilgore’s boomtown skyline. Restored derricks were installed across town, including thirteen in what is now a park where visitors stroll a brick path and gaze up at the towering steel emblems of high stakes, blind faith, and dumb luck.
This article originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of Texas Monthly. Subscribe today.
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