East Texas Oil Museum

East Texas Oil Museum is off US 259 exit Ross St. on the Kilgore College campus. A tribute to the pioneers of the Texas oil industry, this museum traces the history and development of the vast East Texas Oil Field through exhibits, audiovisual presentations, photographs and a re-created 1930s boomtown. The Boomtown USA exhibit portrays a full-scale town with people, animals, stores and machinery common to a lively, booming oil town. Hand-painted murals and portraits of Texas oilmen cover the lobby walls. Geological tools and equipment also are displayed.

Educational videos focus on new technologies revolutionizing the energy industry, including horizontal drilling, salt water disposal, George Mitchell and Barnett Shale, fracturing and stimulation of wells in shale formations to capture hydrocarbons. An animatronic REA lineman on a utility pole describes his work of bringing electricity to rural East Texas.

Time: Allow 1 hour, 30 minutes minimum.