Country living in Kilgore? (Dallas, Tyler: low crime, homes, purchases)

[puppyduks]

We are looking for rural homestead living in NE TX. We like small towns with access to larger city within 2hrs. We homeschool our kids so schools aren't an issue. A great main street with local events to encourage community would be ideal. Low crime rate and a slower pace of life are important. Does anyone have any thoughts on Kilgore?

[walker1962]

I think better choices exist than Kilgore in NE Texas:
1. Athens, Tx about 75 minutes southeast of Dallas and near Cedar Creek Lake; A nicely wooded area.
2. Longview/Tyler
3. Sherman which more due north of Dallas but close to Lake Ray Roberts and Lake Texoma, and Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma but also about 70 minutes from Dallas city limits.

[ChristieP]

What do you do for a living? Will you have to find jobs locally, or can you work remote?

I agree there are better places to live in east Texas than Kilgore.

[KathrynAragon]

I lived in Kilgore for 8 of the longest years of my life and other than my husband, I hated every bit of it.

Longview is bigger but not a lot better in my opinion.

I would check out the bedroom communities around Tyler - Lindale, Chandler, Flint, Bullard, Whitehouse, Overton, etc.

[puppyduks]

Thank you so much. Kilgore is a hard nope then. I will look more north since we are looking for rural and want to avoid the area east of Dallas. I have heard that Tyler is a great town but we can't go there for logistical reasons. We are retired and work from home so no issues with work.

[KathrynAragon]

North of Kilgore and Longview is basically more of the same till you hit Caddo Lake. But maybe that's what you're looking for. That whole area invested deeply into oil and gas production for many decades and didn't tend to diversify much so it feels run down now that the natural gas market in that area is way down. That's my read on it anyway and I'm pretty familiar with it.

Personally I'd focus more on areas that have more diversity when it comes to industries, because they will be more healthy economically.

[5stones]

Look South Tyler areas... Noonday, Flint/Gresham, Bullard.
Jacksonville, Whitehouse and Chandler would be worth looking at. North of Tyler Lindale is good sized.
I really like Athens it’s a good sized town but stands on its own, cute.

I’m not a fan of Longview or Kilgore.

The nice thing about the Tyler area is you can be 20-30min (or less) outside of Tyler and have acreage in the “country” but still have grocery stores and restaurants etc close by. We live in Flint and have 1.5 acres, behind us is 100 acre cattle ranch and just down the road are lots of 5-20 acre places.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by 5stones

Look South Tyler areas... Noonday, Flint/Gresham, Bullard.
Jacksonville, Whitehouse and Chandler would be worth looking at. North of Tyler Lindale is good sized.
I really like Athens it’s a good sized town but stands on its own, cute.

I’m not a fan of Longview or Kilgore.

The nice thing about the Tyler area is you can be 20-30min (or less) outside of Tyler and have acreage in the “country” but still have grocery stores and restaurants etc close by. We live in Flint and have 1.5 acres, behind us is 100 acre cattle ranch and just down the road are lots of 5-20 acre places.

I live in Flint too and love it. I also used to live in Chandler, and in Whitehouse. I loved Chandler - Whitehouse not so much.

Whitehouse and Bullard have very high property taxes.

[SunshineCinderella]

Now that we Texans have suffered the power and water issues from this dang, frigid below-zero storm, we've learned about some huge advantage to living in Longview! Oh, how I've almost envied them while we had a two hour rolling blackout, and we still don't have water safe enough to consume. (We live just couple of miles outside Longview in one of many tiny, TX. towns)


Longview never had water woes, oh so close and yet so far. They are also on SWEPCO, same power company we are with and we only had the one rolling blackout compared to the horror many suffered that were with power companies bossed by RECOT.



Daddy grew up in Tyler and hubby and I lived there for six months while hunting for our retirement property. Loved South Tyler but traffic was and is now getting quite congested.



News reported that folks that are fleeing the huge Dallas area are moving to Tyler and I think the number was four...new subdivisions being built right now.



Longview doesn't have this problem and yet has four? I think it is, water treatment plants. Yeah....if we ever move off of this property, I'm gonna be checking out Longview.

[SunshineCinderella]

Longview has more very good news.

The company "The Gap" (which owns Old Navy also, if I didn't misunderstand news report, has chosen Longview to invest 140 Million dollars in, building an 850,000 sq. ft. building to be a warehouse? and they called it a school of some kind, too.



The article said that with so much more internet shopping during Covid last year that they need the new facility, I assume to ship purchases from.



They break-ground in April of this year and plan on employing a large number.