Crafton

Crafton is on Farm Road 2127 some two miles east of the Jack county line in northwestern Wise County. Settlement of the community began in the late 1870s after the removal of Comanche Indians from the area. A post office was established there in 1878. Among the first settlers was George R. Craft, who filed a claim for 160 acres near the headwaters of Indian Creek. In 1883 a town was laid out on part of Craft's land, and subsequently the community took the name Crafton. Crafton was within a mile of the Butterfield Overland Mail route and by 1890 had three churches, a district school, a cotton gin, a hotel, steam flouring mills, a half dozen other businesses, and an estimated population of 200. In 1909 a tornado swept through Crafton, destroying all its churches, the school, a cotton gin, two stores, and seven residences. Although the town rebuilt after the tornado, it did not as successfully weather economic change. Crafton was originally a retail point for area farmers, but it suffered both from being bypassed by the railroads in the later 1800s and from declining cotton production in the early 1900s. In 1917 its post office was discontinued, and by the mid-1920s its population had declined to 168. In 1950 the community had an estimated fifty residents and one business. From 1986 through 2000 its population stood at twenty.