{"id":117313,"date":"2026-01-30T12:37:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T12:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/117313\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T12:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T12:37:27","slug":"this-east-texas-town-was-once-home-to-the-worlds-richest-acre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/117313\/","title":{"rendered":"This East Texas Town Was Once Home to the World\u2019s Richest Acre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                  The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/tag\/detours\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Coordinates<\/a>\u00a0series celebrates lesser-known locales worth visiting across the state.          <\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s limits, including two dozen lining a block that came to be known as the World\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of Texas Monthly. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/subscribe\/end-article\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>        Read Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Coordinates\u00a0series celebrates lesser-known locales worth visiting across the state. In 1925 a wildcatter who regularly conned investors into&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[51775,51776,51777,9,24,63,122,124,123,10922,956],"class_list":{"0":"post-117313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-coordinates","9":"tag-february-2026-issue","10":"tag-kilgore","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news","17":"tag-road-trips","18":"tag-travel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}