The Best Things to Do in Longview, Texas

The arboretum sits on 26 acres between the convention complex and a tributary of Grace Creek, and it opened on November 2, 2019, which makes it the newest major attraction in the city by a wide margin. There is roughly a mile of trail through the gardens, a brook with several small waterfalls, and a pond with a fountain at the bottom of the run.

Admission is 5 dollars a person and children six and under are free, which is the best value of anything on this list. It is a working collection of native East Texas trees and plants rather than a manicured formal garden, so it draws birds and butterflies in a way a city park does not.

The race started in 1978 as a promotion for the opening of Longview Mall, when balloon pilot Bill Bussey hung a mall banner off his envelope and flew it over town. A balloon glow was added in the mall parking lot two years later. In 1985 the governor gave Longview the official designation Balloon Capital of Texas.

The event went dark from 1987 to 1989 and came back in 1990 at the East Texas Regional Airport. It now runs from the fairgrounds outside the Maude Cobb Convention Center. Morning competition flights launch from wherever the wind says, so launch and landing sites move day to day.

The museum occupies a 1910 building on North Fredonia and covers early settlement, the oil boom that remade this part of the state, and local military history. The exhibit people come back for is the one on the Bill Dalton bank robbery, and the museum builds an annual Dalton Days event around it.

Exhibits rotate more often than the size of the building suggests. KLTV covered a temporary show on the role of the wheel in American history in April 2026.

LMFA shows its permanent collection in the Wrather Gallery and turns over two more rooms about six times a year. That cadence is why the programming punches above the size of the city. Native Perspectives, America 250 opened May 23 and runs to September 12, 2026, with thirteen artists representing eleven tribes or nations, organized by executive director Tiffany Jehorek, curator Derek Frazier, and Caddo artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

The Longview News-Journal covered the opening in May and Glasstire, the statewide art publication, reviewed it in August. Very little in a city this size gets that kind of outside attention.

WOW is a nonprofit children's discovery center that held its grand opening in August 2016 in a downtown storefront. Everything is built to be touched, and the target is roughly preschool through early elementary, so older kids will move through it quickly.

The short open hours are the thing to plan around. It is closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and does not open until the afternoon on Thursday and Sunday.

The S.E. Belcher Jr. Chapel and Performance Center opened in fall 2007 and is the performance home of the Longview Symphony, the Longview Ballet Theatre, and the East Texas Symphonic Band. Between those residencies it books touring concerts, comedians and Broadway productions.

The 2026 season is built around two anniversaries, LeTourneau University's 80th and the center's 20th. Announced dates include Andy Grammer on August 30, Crowder in October over homecoming weekend, and A Christmas Story in December.

Built in 1972 on land donated by the Cargill family along an old railroad line, this was the second trail in Texas to earn National Recreation Trail designation. It runs about three miles of paved path from the Walnut Hills lot on North Fourth Street south to East Marshall Avenue at Teague Park.

There are restrooms between Hughey Drive and Le Duke Boulevard, plus a pavilion, picnic tables, a playground and exercise stations along the way. The stretch between Fourth Street and Hollybrook is lighted. At the north end it links to the Guthrie Trail and then the Paul G. Boorman Trail, which together make roughly a ten mile route.

Community groups began building the plaza in 2014 and it was dedicated in 2015, with granite monuments and engraved bricks honoring every branch of service. The half scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was set in place in 2016 and carries all the names the original in Washington does.

It is free, it is outdoors, and it takes twenty minutes. Go at the end of the day when the light is low and the park is quiet.

The market runs Saturday mornings in the lot next to High and Cotton streets from spring into late fall. The rule that makes it worth the trip is that everything sold has to be locally produced, so you are buying from the person who grew or made it rather than from a reseller with a truck.

KLTV covered its sixteenth season in 2025. Live music, produce, honey and small batch goods are the standing mix.