Situated in the East Texas Piney Woods, Longview was established in 1870 when O. H. Methvin deeded land to the Southern Pacific to build a railroad station. The village became the county seat of Gregg County in 1873 and quickly prospered as a rail, cotton, and manufacturing center. The discovery of the East Texas Oil Field in 1930-1931 revealed that Longview sat in the middle of the world's largest pool of petroleum. The boom had begun! Today Longview is home to almost 80,000 residents. The city that bills itself as "Real East Texas" is a manufacturing, medical, and educational center and home to such events as the Great Texas Balloon Race and AlleyFest arts festival.

From his command post in a downtown Kansas City skyscraper, the nation's foremost lumberman, R.A. Long, received the devastating report from his company's timber scouts in 1918: his sources for raw material were nearly exhausted. The once-lush pine and oak forests of the Mississippi Delta had been stripped clean and converted into farmland. Now, his Long-Bell Lumber Company was at a crossroads. The timber baron put the question to a vote by his board of directors: disband or build the world's largest lumber mill somewhere else? This group of middle-aged men looked upon R.A. Long as a father figure and a proverbial King Midas, able to turn wood into gold. Their decision was easy: they wholeheartedly endorsed the plan to build. And their vision became the Longview story, combining social engineering, modern marketing, and a whole lot of money into a 20th-century urban success story.