East Texas Oil Museum

Well, last Saturday, while some of you may have been relaxing, cleaning, vacationing, working, or running around crazy, we were on a fieldtrip. Out in our neck of the woods, there is this great piece of history in the form of black gold! The largest oil field within the US borders is out in East Texas. Oil was first discovered here on Oct. 3, 1930 and the little town of Kilgore, TX went from 800 people to 8,000 people--in 24 hours!

The museum tour featured a twenty-two minute video of actual news reels from "back in the day" which were all spliced together to render the full account of the breaking news.

There was also an entire town replicated with storefronts that could be entered and a model of what the streets were like since that year was the rainest and wettest year of the "century?" It was interesting to see in the news reels all the cars stuck in the mud with teams of horses hauling them out. As a sidenote....everything in the museum was donated by an East Texan. All authentic and all awesome.

The last cool thing was an elevator ride to the center of the earth. This mock ride jolted the kids into thinking they were going down into the different layers of rock and the puppets described what they were seeing and where the oil was found. All in all, hubby and I found it fascinating. The kiddos found it "neat".

Ahh, so much is wasted on youth!

They're surrounded by mud, but they're all smiles!

We don't look like we're from the 30's, but it sure was fun pretending.

This awesome jukebox was in the Drug Store. If only the soda fountain had been working! Shucks.

I can't be in the past and not tell someone about it.