Dean-Keener-Crim House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Dean-Keener-Crim House in Gregg County. Now, some houses just sit there. And some houses collect stories the way a front porch collects neighbors on a summer evening.

The Dean-Keener-Crim House in Kilgore is that second kind. It starts around 1876, when a man named S. G.

Dean built the one-story east wing. That modest stretch of wood and nail is, by the marker's reckoning, the oldest structure still standing in Kilgore. Think on that a moment.

Everything else got torn down, burned out, or swallowed by time. That east wing just kept on standing. In 1881, a man named L.

J. Keener bought the place. Keener, born in 1840, didn't leave well enough alone, and good for him.

He attached a two-story west wing to Dean's original one-story east. Now you've got something, a house that grows in two different directions at once, like a good Texas story will. Keener died in 1888, and the house moved on, as houses do.

Then along comes Wiley N. Crim. Born in 1865, cotton ginner and grocer, a man who clearly believed a house wasn't finished until it was comfortable.

When Crim purchased the place in 1902, he added porches, and he enclosed the well. Now that's a detail worth savoring. He enclosed the well.

This man was thinkin' about the long haul. And the long haul is exactly what he got. Crim died in 1937, but his family, they never left.

By the time that marker was recorded in 1975, the Crim family still owned and occupied that house. Three generations of names on the deed, and the family that stuck. But here is where the story gets that particular East Texas kind of wild.

During the oil boom of the 1930s, oil was discovered right there, on the Crim property and on nearby Crim land. The oldest house in Kilgore, built plain and modest around 1876, was sitting on top of something the whole time. S.

G. Dean built four walls and a roof. Keener added a second story.

Crim added a porch and closed up the well. And the earth underneath all of it just waited, patient as you please, for the 1930s to come around. Some houses just sit there.

This one had other plans.

What the marker says

The one-story east wing of this house, considered the oldest still standing in Kilgore, was built by S. G. Dean about 1876. After buying the structure in 1881, L. J. Keener (1840-88) attached the two-story west wing. Wiley N. Crim (1865-1937) a cotton ginner and grocer, added porches and enclosed the well when he purchased the house in 1902. His family still owns and occupies it. Oil was discovered on this and nearby Crim property during the boom of the 1930s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1975