Sivells Bend

Sivells Bend is on Farm Road 1201 four miles from the Red River and twenty miles northwest of Gainesville in central north Cooke County. Simon and Bill Sivells, after whom the town was named, moved to the site from Kentucky Town, Texas, around 1850 and built a small store in the vicinity. Because of continued Indian attacks the Sivellses abandoned their store, and nine more years passed before a permanent community was established. In its early years Sivells Bend was settled mainly by farmers. In the late 1860s a branch of the Chisholm Trail came through the community. By 1872 the town had a post office; ten years later it had a population of 100, three general stores, three steam gristmill-cotton gins, a blacksmith, two physicians, and a teacher. During the Civil War a company of Confederate soldiers commanded by a Captain Clark was stationed at Sivells Bend. In the 1930s oil was discovered in Cooke County, but the population declined to a low of forty by the early 1940s, when the large army training post Camp Howze was being built. The post office at Sivells Bend was discontinued in 1973. From the late 1960s to 1990 the population was 100. In the 1980s the community had the Sivells Bend school, the Bearhead Baptist Church, a Methodist church, and several homes. The population dropped to fifty in 2000.