Carl Estes

Longview Morning Journal, 
Longview Daily Times, Tyler Courier-Times

Hall of Fame Class of 2024

Newspaper publisher Carl Lewis Estes was both a newspaper publisher and an economic development dynamo, and Longview continues to reap the benefits of his work more than 50 years after his death. 

Estes was born in New Market,Tennessee. He attended the public schools of Commerce and Denison, then East Texas State Teachers College (now East Texas State University). He served in the cavalry in World War I and was a lieutenant commander in the navy during World War II. 

As editor of his college newspaper, he became interested in journalism as a career, and he subsequently worked for the Commerce Journal, the Denison Herald, and the Tyler Courier-Times.

As a foreign correspondent for the International News Service, Estes spent 1927 in Paris and Stockholm. Back in Texas, he founded the Tyler Telegraph in 1930 and four years later bought the Longview Daily News and the Longview Morning Journal. In Longview he also owned and published two weekly newspapers, the Longview Lens and the Greggtonian.

During the 1930s Estes was publisher of the Van Free Press, the Panola Watchman, East Texas Oil Magazine (later the Texas Oil Journal), East Texas Dairyman, the Wood County Record, and the Mineola Monitor.

He was an originator of the Texas Rose Festival at Tyler, originator and first president of the East Texas Land and Royalty Owners Association, vice president and secretary of the Van Oil Rovalty Association, and an originator of the East Texas Dairy and Milk Products Association.

Upon returning to Longview after World War II, he was effective in helping persuade a number of major industries to locate plants in the Longview area. As chairman of the Sabine Watershed Association, he was active in the development of the water resources of East Texas for industrial, recreational and transportation uses.

Estes married Margaret Virginia McLeod in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, in 1943. He died in 1967 and is buried in Longview, the city he was instrumental in developing from a small town to an East Texas industrial juggernaut. His wife Margaret succeeded him as publisher and continued in that role for many years.