A Travel Guide to Longview, in East Texas

Each individual city needs to be regarded for one thing. In Texas it is usually a well-known farm crop: Poteet has strawberries. Mission has citrus. Luling has watermelons. You get the thought. Longview’s railroad and oil patch heritage, which is comparable to that of quite a few other East Texas cities, does not accurately lend alone to placing imagery in good shape for a T-shirt. So the metropolis of about 82,000 owes a ton to a area dentist named Bill Bussey, who turned interested in warm-air balloons in the 1970s. He commenced competing in races across the region, and then in 1978 he commenced the yearly Great Texas Balloon Race, which now draws 15,000 to 20,000 site visitors. You’ll see the sizzling-air balloon as a image of Longview satisfaction on shirts and murals and in statues all about city.

The 2023 iteration of race weekend kicks off June 16—this year’s party also operates in conjunction with the U.S. National Warm Air Balloon Championship, which arrives to Longview June 12–18. If you are intrigued in likely up at other occasions of the 12 months, Bussey gives rides by way of his enterprise Balloon Adventures United states of america. Acrophobics can happily maintain equally toes on the floor in the downtown location, which has expert a regular revitalization more than the previous twenty decades, in particular in its eating scene. 

Dine + Drink

Be part of the regulars at Deb’s Downtown Cafe, where soups and sauces are created from scratch. Barbecue fanatics are rejoicing at the spring opening of the brick-and-mortar variation of bassist turned pitmaster Bryan Bingham’s Sunbird Barbecue. At Korean fusion location Evergreen Foodstuff Manufacturing facility, cooks Seajin Kim and Stella Park whip up poke bowls, Korean-design corn canines, and sushi. For a high-close dining expertise, travel a handful of minutes from the city middle to Tomboni’s Bistro. Each other Saturday, deliver your yoga mat to Oil Horse Brewing Business, which specializes in beers crafted to get rid of gluten, for its “Poses and Pints” class. Appreciate natural wines and regional beers at the new Greenside Beverage Organization, then pick up some Creole foods next doorway from Cace’s Kitchen area. At Wild Honey Creamery, nearby ingredients are stirred up into compact-batch ice creams. 

See + Do

Understand about Longview’s past at the Gregg County Historic Museum. Considering that its opening four many years in the past, the Longview Arboretum and Mother nature Center has come to be a popular place for events, but it is also an outside refuge. Forward of a go into its new house, in 2025, the Longview Museum of High-quality Arts is highlighting pieces from its everlasting assortment, which focuses on Texas regional art since the 1930s. 

Shop

You hardly ever know what you’ll uncover at the 504, a six-thousand-square-foot vintage marketplace that gets new items each and every day. At Mélas Apparel Company, seem for Mexican handbags constructed out of recycled elements. Peruse the hardcovers and zines at Textbooks & Barrels, then belly up to its wine bar. Longview mainstay Ellie Bee’s, a women’s upscale-clothes boutique, not long ago moved to a larger area just north of downtown.

Remain

Chain accommodations dominate the landscape, but if you push twenty minutes west to Gladewater, you can faucet into your Downton Abbey fantasies at Walker Manor Bed & Breakfast, a a few-tale neoclassical mansion constructed in 1901 that’s known for its afternoon teas.

A variation of this write-up originally appeared in the May perhaps 2023 problem of Texas Month to month with the headline “Up, Up, and Absent in Longview.” Subscribe right now.