Longview is actually a city spread between Harrison County and Gregg County in Texas. This city is regarded as the commercial hub with the Longview Metropolitan Statistical Area and is one of its principle cities. Having a population of approximately 77,000 people, Longview features a majority population led by Whites, Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, Pacific Islanders and Asians respectively.
The Longview sports scene is fairly different and unusual. Apart from the regular college sports of football, volleyball, Baseball, golf, softball, soccer as well as other varsity games, they host several yearly events that vary from boat races, balloon races, motorcycle rallies, athletic events. All these events take place throughout the year and celebrate some facet of sports coupled with their culture.
From the month of January the East Texas Boat, RV and Camping Expo occurs. This 3 day event is held around the last week of January every year. The building blocks of this event was laid by the owners of Longview Marines, Gene Brady and Dale Clark and it has been active since 1982. This expo brings RVs, yachts, boats and motorcycles, ATVs from all of across East Texas under one roof drawing almost over 10,000 attendees annually.
Another major attraction in this region is the Annual Memorial Day Motorcycle rally. This rally brings individual bikers and motorcycle riders and such clubs coming from all over Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. This event started in 2006 and it has been a major attraction in this area. The event includes many bike games, a bikers show, music and parades and the big attraction called the Teresi Dyno-Drag. During this interactive event, bikers test their abilities in racing and find out how quickly they can really go in a quarter mile stretch.
Probably the most interesting festivals that take place in Longview would be the Alley Fest that is held at the onset of summer. This fest began in 1978 and hosts an art show, a music festival, a food contest and a marathon run that is a 1 mile, 5K and 10K course. The newest introduction to the fest is the Kids Marathon run where children between the ages of 5 to 12 participate in a 25.2 miles run.
The most popular amongst every one of these is the Great Texas Balloon race that is held in the month of July every year at the East Texas Regional Airport. This event is considered as the “longest running hot-air balloon race in Texas”. This race began in 1978 over the launch of the Longview Mall as a giant celebration. It continued thereafter and it has grown into a competitive event of world class standards. This event is considered to attract world class hot air balloon pilots from all across the world and consists of balloon fights and balloon glows. The added attraction in this event is always to observe how these balloons get inflated and handled. This is an event which is held in association with the North American Balloon Association and invites eighty special sport balloons.
The Longview News Journal is the major newspaper publication of this area and goes back to 187. This publication carries all the local news, sports and community information.