DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's the story of the Lou Della Crim Home. Now, if you were driving through Gregg County and you spotted a modest little bungalow-style residence, you might not give it a second glance. Built in 1920 for a woman named Lou Della Crim — born in 1868, Thompson by birth, Crim by name — it sat on the former site of the Hearne Hotel.
Quiet street. Quiet house. Quiet life, you'd think.
You'd be wrong. Lou Della owned a farm out at Laird Hill, about four miles south of that bungalow. Her son Malcolm — who would go on to become the first mayor of Kilgore, which is its own piece of Texas history — had teamed up with a local financier by the name of Ed Bateman to head up an oil exploration project on that very property.
Malcolm Crim. Ed Bateman. A farm at Laird Hill.
You put those three together and you get something that would reach all the way to the front pages of newspapers across the nation. December 28th, 1930. That's the date you want to hold onto.
Because on that day, the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1 blew in at that farm. Not just any well — the discovery well for this area of the significant East Texas oil field. The kind of moment that changes a map, changes a town, changes just about everything in a four-mile radius and then some.
National attention, the marker says. And with national attention comes the need for order. So it wasn't long before the Texas Rangers came to this part of Gregg County — area Rangers, stationed right there at Lou Della Crim's bungalow on the former site of the Hearne Hotel.
And among them, the celebrated Captain M. T. Gonzaullas.
Known, if you haven't heard the name whispered around a campfire before, as Lone Wolf. A bungalow built in 1920 for a woman named Lou Della. A farm four miles south.
A wildcat well that blew in on a December morning. And Lone Wolf Gonzaullas sleeping under her roof. Some houses just have a way of finding history — or maybe it's the other way around.
What the marker says
This bungalow style residence was constructed in 1920 for Lou Della (Thompson) Crim (b. 1868), on the former site of the Hearne Hotel. The farm she owned at Laird Hill (4 mi. S) was part of an oil exploration project headed by her son Malcolm, later the first Kilgore mayor, and local financier Ed Bateman. Her property gained national attention on Dec. 28, 1930, when the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1, the discovery well for this area of the significant East Texas oil field, blew in there. Area Rangers, including the celebrated Capt. M. T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas, were housed here.