Granbury

Granbury, county seat of Hood County, lies thirty-six miles southwest of Fort Worth on the shore of Lake Granbury on U.S. Highway 377. In 1854 "Uncle Tommy" Lambert and Amon Bond led a group of emigrants, mostly from Tennessee, across the Brazos River to the west bank into traditional Indian territory. That same year, Elizabeth Crockett brought her family from Tennessee to settle on a league of land awarded by the Republic of Texas to heirs of men who fought in the Texas Revolution in 1836. In 1866 brothers J. and J. H. Nutt donated forty acres of riverfront property to form a new townsite, and Hood County was carved out of Johnson and Erath counties and named in honor of Gen. John Bell Hood. The new town was named for Gen. Hiram Bronson Granbury, who led Confederate troops from this area into battle during the Civil War. Three spirited elections were needed to make Granbury the county seat, instead of the older Glen Rose and Fort Spunky further south. The first two courthouses burned, the second one in 1875, at which time Somervell County was demarcated out of Hood County. Granbury's new three-story courthouse was built of Brazos limestone and had a lighted clock tower.

The first public school in Granbury was taught by A. P. Harbin in 1871, the same year that the Methodists established the first church. A year later W. L. Bond founded the first newspaper, the Vidette. This was later taken over by Ashley Crockett, who had come to Texas in 1854. Granbury prospered as the trading center for much of north central Texas, marketing pecans, peanuts, peaches, grains, and cotton. Reunion Park, established in honor of returning Civil War veterans who met annually into the twentieth century, provided an active arena for trading and auctioning livestock. The county fair is held there annually.