| 6th graders view the exhibits at the New London museum, where one of the worst disasters in Texas history took place. A natural gas explosion in 1937 destroyed the school, caused when a woodshop saw sparked unscented, natural gas which had pooled underneath the building. Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury.Today the museum sits in an old drug store, across from West Rusk High School - the site of the original school. |
London School before the explosion.
and after.
Students listen to the museum guide's description of the tragic events.
Students take a moment to relax at Kilgore
Park before visiting the East Texas Oil Museum.
The Drug Store at the Oil Museum was a
popular spot to visit. Students listen to the jukebox as it plays the
favorite big band music of the era.
The museum's Boomtown USA contains a full
scale town full of stores, people, animals, and machinery depicting the
lively activity of a town booming in oil in the early 1930s.
Students learned that most East Texas towns had unpaved streets and wooden sidewalks in the 1920s and 30s.
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