The End of the Beginning: 1910 to 1930

After the eventful first decade of the century, Longview's buoyant development under the mayoralty of G. A. Bodenheim continued unabated for several years.

In appreciation of Bodie's leadership, part of the town square and wagon yard next to the downtown depot and city hall was landscaped as a city park named in his honor. Located on the southwest corner of Fredonia and Tyler Streets, Bodie Park was the site of a monument to the Confederate dead which was emplaced in 1911 by Longview's R. B. Levy Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. When the Glover-Crim building was erected on the site of Bodie Park in the 1930s, the monument was moved to the courthouse square.

For several years, cotton harvests and prices were generally satisfactory, and the lumber mills were thriving. In 1912, the mule-drawn streetcars became electric trolleys. By 1920, one source claims Longview had 9 1/2 miles of paved streets, some concrete sidewalks, electric street lights, city garbage collection, a paid fire department with the first two pumping trucks in the state, and home mail delivery. In 1920 and 1921, a 16-foot-wide strip of asphalt known as State Highway 15 (the future U.S. Highway 80) became the first paved road across Gregg County. Within Longview, all Highway 15 traffic was diverted through the central business district along Second and Tyler Streets.

Beginning in 1911 with the formation of the Port Bolivar & Iron Ore railroad, Longview's enviable position as a rail center was boosted by the addition of a fourth rail line. The PB&IO laid about 30 miles of track north from Longview as part of a plan to carry iron ore by rail and barge to distant smelters. Ore City was developed, but the ore transport scheme never materialized. The Santa Fe took over the line in 1914 and abandoned the tracks in 1927. In the 1970s, the PB&IO right-of-way within Longview was developed as Cargill Long Park.

Until the oil boom, the tallest building in Longview was the four-story First National Bank. It was erected in 1912 on the northeast corner of Fredonia and Tyler Streets, catercorner from Bodie Park. The bank was more than matched in grandeur by the First Baptist Church, a domed Greek Revival edifice which stood from 1914 to 1982 on the northwest corner of Fredonia and South Streets.

One indication of increasing wealth and the leisure to enjoy it was the completion of Lake Lomond (popularly misspelled as "Lamond") in 1910. It was a sporting business venture by F. T. Rembert, R. F. Echols, and Echols's son Hugh. Located about a mile west of the city limit and fancifully named for Loch Lomond in Scotland, Lake Lomond featured a bath house and pavilion, motor launch rides, and fishing by permit. Another reflection of the mood of the day was the East Texas Exhibit Association, formed about 1913 with Mayor Bodenheim as president. Annual exhibitions were conducted at the association's fair grounds on Fair Street. Nearby to the south was F. T. Rembert's race track, where horse races attracted spectators from far and wide. In 1933, the fair grounds became a city park, later named Stamper Park after the resident caretaker, Paul Stamper.

Other trappings of a commercially oriented city were soon to follow. The Longview Chamber of Commerce was established about 1916. Pinecrest Country Club was organized in 1920. In 1926, at the instigation of R. Marvin Kelly of Kelly Plow Works, the East Texas Chamber of Commerce was formed at Longview. Although some of the cities represented by that body were much larger, including Dallas and Houston, it remained headquartered at Longview until it was dissolved more than 60 years later. And in 1929, Dr. V. R. Hurst and Oliver Daniel promoted the construction by local capital of the five-story, 64-room Gregg Hotel. Completed in 1930 and doubled in size by Conrad Hilton in 1935, the hotel stood until 1995 at the later site of Heritage Plaza on the northwest corner of Green and Methvin Streets. A new high school (later Henry L. Foster Middle School) was built in 1928, whereupon Campus Ward elementary classes moved into the 1909 high-school building.

However, like many other predominantly agricultural towns throughout the country, Longview experienced economic instability and stagnation after World War I. Cotton profits declined due to soil exhaustion and pests such as the boll weevil, and the lumber industry suffered as local timber was depleted. In January of 1929, the Texas & Pacific moved its division offices and shops from Longview to Mineola, taking away 700 families. Longview's population growth rate per decade declined from 77% in the nineties to 44% in the 1900s and 11% in the teens, followed by a 12% decline from 5,713 to 5,036 in the twenties. The long agricultural beginning of Gregg County and its only incorporated city-Longview-ended in the Great Depression with a whimper before the fortunate boom.