Into the Twentieth Century: 1900 to 1910

Longview was led into the Twentieth Century by Mayor Gabriel Augustus Bodenheim, known as "Bodie" (1873-1957).

A flamboyant cotton broker and exporter from Vicksburg, he arrived in 1898 and married a girl named Willie Bass of a prominent local family. This period was one of general awakening of East Texas towns in a mood of boosterism, accompanied by the first public utilities, paving, and automobiles. As mayor of Longview from 1904 to 1916 and from 1918 to 1920, Bodie personified the new spirit, radiating an enthusiasm for modern civic improvements he had seen in larger cities in the United States and abroad. His personal magnetism, punctuated by a red lapel carnation and a gold-headed cane, helped promote approval of expenditures on projects which were advanced for that era.

Bodie began by sponsoring the long-delayed annexation of the outlying portion of the Junction neighborhood in 1904. One object was to put Longview's liberally estimated population over the 5,000 minimum required for state approval to sell city improvement bonds. (The city's actual population grew from 3,591 in 1900 to 5,155 in 1910.) Immediately in 1904, the first municipal water works was installed, pumping water from an artesian well at the southeast corner of High Street and Marshall Avenue and using a tall standpipe next to the hilltop Methvin home site. Until then, residents depended on water from wells or from cisterns supplied by rainwater draining from roofs. In 1910, Longview's sanitary sewer system was begun. But for years to come, many homes continued to use privies located along the alleys which ran behind nearly every city lot. The outhouse pits were periodically emptied into a wagon by a city crew. Also in 1910, Longview began paving a few city streets, using wooden blocks.

As befitted a city intent on modernization and growth, Gregg County's Longview Common School District became Longview Independent School District in 1909. About 1,300 white and black students were drawn from a district population of about 8,000. LISD immediately replaced the wooden 1883 high school on College Street with a three-story brick structure featuring an impressive cupola. Looking ahead a few years, three new white elementary schools were built in 1912 and 1913: Campus Ward, on the high-school campus; First Ward, succeeding the Teague School, located north of Padon Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets; and Northcutt Heights, located on the hilltop north of Marshall Avenue and west of High Street.

Along with the modernization of Longview, the temperance movement gained strength: the city's twelve saloons were closed when Gregg County went dry in 1903 by a vote of 832 to 733. In an agricultural state whose politics were not yet dominated by a few metropolitan cities, Thomas M. Campbell of Longview (later of Palestine) commenced a four-year term as governor in 1907. When U.S. President Taft was passing through one noontime in late October, 1909, his train stopped briefly at the downtown depot because the President wanted to see Governor Campbell's home town. Before a crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 in the town square and wagon yard next to the depot, Mayor Bodenheim welcomed Taft, who was presented with a possum-and-sweet-potato dinner to eat on the train. Eighty-seven years later, President Clinton made a campaign appearance one block west on Tyler Street, on the site of the town pump at the original center of the city.

Automobiles became more than a novelty during this period; J. Garland Pegues established the City Garage (later Pegues-Hurst Ford) in 1904. However, all of the roads leading out of Longview were still dirt wagon tracks, so railroads remained the lifelines of the city. In 1910, there were 18 passenger trains daily, going in both directions on the T&P, I&GN, and Texas & Gulf Railways. The Texas & Gulf, acquired by the Santa Fe, had been connected to that company's rails at Center in 1909, thus reaching the Gulf of Mexico as originally hoped.

Longview's economy continued to depend mostly on the railroads, cotton, and lumber. A substantial industrial complex extended west from Center Street on the south side of the T&P track. First came Kelly Plow Works. Next, west of Court Street, there was the box factory, built in 1903 by Graham Manufacturing Company and producing containers for shipping fruits and vegetables. Finally, there was R. G. Brown's sawmill and lumber mill, from which a narrow-gauge railroad extended 15 miles to bring timber from forests. Another large planing mill, operated by Castleberry & Flewellen, was located south of the I&GN track at the Junction. For many years, Longview echoed with the steam whistles of these four plants, the three railroads, and R. G. Brown's miniature locomotives.