The World at War-We Heed Freedom's Call:  1940 to 1950

As the East Texas oil boom receded, the big question was whether Longview would stagnate like most other oil-boom centers of the past.

Diversification efforts earlier in the century had failed to save local agriculture, and the big lumber mills were gone. Kelly Plow Works and the Graham box factory remained the only substantial factories in Longview. Thus, civic leaders attempted to attract major non-polluting, non-union industries.

One early result was that local investors funded development of an experimental steel plant by a charismatic Hungarian inventor named Julius Madaras in 1940 and 1941. Located at what became the northwest corner of Lake Lamond Road and Cotton Street, the facility attempted to produce steel from local iron ore by direct reduction using local natural gas instead of the usual blast furnace fueled with coke. However, the process soon proved impractical, and World War II extinguished the effort. The Madaras steel plant was used for many years as a conventional foundry instead.

A modern city obviously had to have an airport. Land for that purpose was purchased with county funds obtained from a bond issue in 1940. Work on the airport continued after the war, and it was opened in the summer of 1947.

In its development after the oil boom, Longview was favored by the leadership of a newspaper publisher and industrial real-estate broker named Carl Estes (1896-1967). Reared in Dennison and Commerce, he became editor and manager of the Tyler Courier-Times, acquiring substantial political influence in Austin and Washington. Soon after the oil boom began, Estes resolved to make Longview the leading city in East Texas. His influence was exerted chiefly through the city's only daily newspapers, the Morning Journal and the Daily News. Estes bought control of those papers from Clarence Faulk in 1934 and ruthlessly used them as extensions of his forceful, mercurial personality. He served in both world wars. Although Estes lived in Pennsylvania in the late 1930s as advisor to Republican Governor Arthur James, he was a leading Democrat before and after.

With the coming of World War II, Longview was selected as the site of a major army hospital-largely due to the political influence of Carl Estes. Harmon General Hospital consisted of 232 frame buildings interconnected by enclosed ramps on a 156-acre site reached by an extension of Mobberly Avenue south of the city limit. The facility was dedicated on December 15, 1942, barely a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and inactivated on January 20, 1946.

One of Longview's national distinctions during the war was as the gathering point feeding the Big Inch pipeline. Two feet in diameter, the largest pipeline yet constructed, the Big Inch carried crude oil to Phoenixville in southeastern Pennsylvania. From there, branches led to East Coast refineries. Completed in July of 1943, the Big Inch protected the bulk of the nation's wartime fuel supply against German submarines which threatened tanker ships that had been carrying the petroleum.

After the war, as Tyler leveraged Camp Fannin into what became East Texas Medical Center, Longview parlayed Harmon General Hospital into the future LeTourneau University and LeTourneau, Inc. Carl Estes spearheaded a civic effort to bring R. G. LeTourneau to Longview early in 1946 with his existing excavator manufacturing company and plans for creating LeTourneau Technical Institute. The means included the government's gift of Harmon General Hospital for the school and local businessmen's gift of an enormous tract of nearby land-largely in the Sabine River flood plain-for the factory. An ardent lay evangelist, R. G. LeTourneau made a historic contribution to the Longview community by attracting sober, evangelical craftsmen from the Midwest.

Besides initiating the city's postwar industrialization, the LeTourneau plant and school stimulated development of southern Longview. The Pinewood Park addition dates from that period. Some notable downtown buildings of the late 1940s are the Bramlette Building and Fedway department store (later Dillard's, then the Atrium) on the northeast corner of High and Tyler Streets.

Cherokee Lake was developed in the late 1940s by Longview private interests, led by Longview National Bank President Verne A. Clements. Much of the forest clearing and excavation was done by R. G. LeTourneau's company as a means of testing and perfecting his heavy equipment products. Debt for land acquisition and construction was retired by income from cooling water for the new Knox Lee power plant and Longview city water. Previously, Longview water had come from the Sabine River until it was polluted by oilfield salt water, then via a city pipeline from Big Sandy Creek in the southwest corner of Upshur County.