Hood County

Hood County, Texas

Hood County, Texas

The Hood County Courhouse is located in Granbury, Texas, the county seat. Photograph by Michael Barera.
Hood County, Texas

Hood County, Texas

Map of Hood County, Texas. Map Credit: Robert Plocheck.

Hood County embraces 425 square miles of the north central plains of Texas. Granbury, the county seat, is forty-one miles southwest of Fort Worth on U.S. Highway 377. The county's center point is at 32°27' north latitude and 97°47' west longitude. The county is crossed by State Highway 144, U.S. Highway 377, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The county is part of the Western Cross Timbers. Its elevations range from 600 to 1,000 feet. The eastern and west central part consists of undulating to hilly terrain surfaced by brown, red, or dark loam. The remaining soils are red or mottled loam and sand. The Brazos and Paluxy rivers are the main water sources in the county. The Brazos River flows in a winding pattern north to south; the Paluxy flows from the northwest to southeast across the southwest corner of the county. Lake Granbury, a man-made reservoir of 8,700 acres on the Brazos River, was completed in 1969. The vegetation features bluestems, Indian grass, and gramas, mesquite, oaks, and junipers. About 31 to 40 percent of the land is considered prime farmland. Hood County's primary resources include limestone, industrial sand, and oil and gas. The average annual precipitation is thirty inches, and the average temperature ranges from a low of 34° F in January to a high of 96° in July. The growing season averages 232 days.

Before settlers from the East ventured onto the plains, the area was the home of the Comanches and, to a lesser extent, the Lipan Apaches and Kiowas. In the nineteenth century a band of Comanches known as the Penatekas or Honey-Eaters roamed the area west of the Cross Timbers, generally between the headwaters of the Colorado and Brazos rivers. Comanche Peak, the highest point in Hood County, was a Comanche meetingplace. The Lipan Apaches also roamed the area, and the town of Lipan in extreme northwestern Hood County was named after a group that once lived in the Kickapoo Valley. Settlers from the East began to arrive in the area ten or fifteen years before the Civil War. One of the first, Charles E. Barnard, set up a trading post and Barnard's Mill at a site now in Somervell County. George B. Erath, for whom an adjacent county is named, was one of the first to survey on the Brazos River (1846–50). Other settlers, mostly stock raisers and farmers, began to settle in the Brazos and Paluxy river valleys in 1854. The main concern facing these early settlers was the frequent raids by the Comanches. Indian horse-stealing raids into the Paluxy and Squaw Creek country occurred all during the Civil War and until 1872, when a party of Indians stole horses from a section of land close to Cresson, in northeast Hood County.

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Rhonda L. Callaway | © TSHA

Handbook of Texas Logo

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.

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

Hood County is classified as a County

Altitude Range

600 ft – 1230 ft

Size

Land area does not include water surface area, whereas total area does

  • Land Area: 420.6 mi²
  • Total Area: 436.8 mi²

Temperature

January mean minimum: 30.1°F
July mean maximum: 95.1°F

Rainfall, 2019

35.1 inches

Population Count, 2019

61,643

Civilian Labor Count, 2019

27,049

Unemployment, 2019

7.7%

Property Values, 2019

$7,873,190,667 USD

Per-Capita Income, 2019

$50,741 USD

Retail Sales, 2019

$990,222,140 USD

Wages, 2019

$195,590,952 USD

Hood County

Highlighted:
  • Hood County
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