"KILGORE, TEXAS (Gregg County). Kilgore is on U.S. Highway 259 and State highways 31, 42, and 135, 120 miles east of Dallas in south central Gregg County. The area was first settled before the Civil War by planters from the old South, but the city was not founded until 1872, when the International-Great Northern Railroad built a line between Longview and Palestine. The railroad bypassed New Danville, and the company platted a new town, which they named for Constantine Buckley Kilgore, who sold the 174-acre townsite to the railroad and urged many of the businesses of New Danville to move there. A post office opened in 1873, and by 1885 Kilgore had two steam gristmill cotton gins, a church, and a district school; the estimated population was 250. The Kilgore State Bank opened in 1906, and an independent school district was formed in 1910. By 1914 the town had two banks, Baptist and Methodist churches, a newspaper, two cotton gins, several general stores, a drugstore, an ice cream parlor, a hotel, and a reported population of 700. The town reached a population of 1,000 in 1929." (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hek02)

 

The Kilgore National Bank (Charter #12698) was the only National Bank in Kilgore. It was chartered in April, 1925 and liquidated as a National Bank with all the other national banks in 1935. The bank printed 1902 Plain Backs and 1929 $5 notes, Types 1 & 2. In ten years, the bank printed $446,310 with $36,150 outstanding in 1935. Three large notes and 10 small are cited in the Kelly census.

This is the home of The Kilgore National Bank