Dodd City

Dodd City is at the intersection of State Highway 56 and Farm Road 2077, five miles east of Bonham in central Fannin County. Settlement of the area occurred in 1839, when Maj. Edmund Hall Dodd and his wife, Elizabeth (Garnett), arrived from Kentucky. The couple built a log house that soon served area farmers and travelers as a trading center, post office, and stagecoach inn. From 1845 to 1865 a post office branch existed at the site under the name Licke. The post office was reestablished under the name Dodd from 1873 to 1902, when the name was changed to Dodd City. Before the Civil War several businesses were added to the growing community, including a two-story hotel. The war retarded growth, but over the next five years the community's population increased as Civil War veterans moved to Texas from the upper South. In 1873 the tracks of the Texas and Pacific Railway reached a community called Quincy, one mile west of Dodd. Quincy was included in the community when Dodd incorporated in 1879. During the next thirty years the town served as a retail center and shipping point for area farmers. By the mid-1880s its population surpassed 400, making it one of the largest communities in Fannin County, with twenty businesses, four churches, a school, a weekly newspaper, and a loan and exchange association. The population reached 500 by 1900, but economic growth leveled off by 1910. Dodd City had 400 residents, an estimated thirty businesses, and two banks in 1926. After 1930 the population steadily declined. At the end of World War II the town had 308 residents and eight businesses. In 1950 the Texas and Pacific ended passenger service to the town, which had a population of 351 in 1990. In 2000 the population was 419 and in 2016 it was estimated at 363.