Gainesville

The Gainesville War Memorial at Gainesville, Texas

The Gainesville War Memorial at Gainesville, Texas

The Gainesville War Memorial at Leonard Park in Gainesville, Texas. Photograph by Michael Barera.

Gainesville, county seat of Cooke County, is in the county's approximate geographic center, on Interstate Highway 35 about sixty-seven miles north of Dallas. In the 1840s the first settlers arrived in the area, attracted by the promises of the newly created Peters colony, which offered 640 acres to each head of family and 320 to each single man, plus land for a church in each settlement. In 1850 Gainesville was established on a 40-acre tract donated by Mary E. Clark. At the suggestion of Col. William F. Fitzhugh, commander of a stockade 3½ miles southeast, the town was named in honor of Gen. Edmund Pendleton Gaines. Gaines, a United States general under whom Fitzhugh had served, had been sympathetic with the Texas Revolution. Gainesville originally consisted of three families who lived in log houses near the banks of Elm Creek. Although Gainesville was made a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route in 1858, Indian attacks retarded the community's growth in its first decade. During the Civil War a controversial trial and hanging of suspected Union loyalists brought the new town to the attention of the state (see GREAT HANGING AT GAINESVILLE).

In the decade after the war the county seat had its first period of extended growth, catalyzed by the expansion of the cattle industry in Texas. Gainesville, only seven miles from the Oklahoma border, became a supply point for cowboys driving herds north to Kansas. Within twenty years the population increased from a few hundred to more than 2,000. To the post office, opened in 1851, and the general store were added a number of churches, two banks, a public school, and a weekly newspaper. Gainesville was incorporated on February 17, 1873, and by 1890 was established as a commercial and shipping point for area ranchers and farmers, partly as a result of the arrival in 1886 of the Santa Fe line and the construction in 1887 of the Gainesville, Henrietta and Western Railway. During the 1890s Gainesville College operated for a time, but it was eventually closed, a victim of the depression of 1893 and the consequent rapid decline of the cattle industry.

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David Minor | © TSHA

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Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.

Belongs to

Gainesville is part of or belongs to the following places:

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

Gainesville is classified as a Town

Location

Latitude: 33.63851940
Longitude: -97.14846800

Has Post Office

Yes

Is Incorporated

Yes

Population Count, 2021 View more »

17,576

Place Type Population (Year/Source) Currently Exists
College or University Yes

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