Walnut Bend

Walnut Bend is a tiny farming community located off Farm Road 371 about twelve miles northeast of Gainesville in northern Cooke County and near the Walnut Bend of the Red River and the Oklahoma state line. Settlement in the area probably began by the mid-1800s, and the community of Walnut Bend most likely existed in the early 1900s. Highway maps of the 1930s show scattered farms and Walnut Bend School, situated on the edge of the Walnut Bend Oil Field. In the 1940s the Walnut Bend area had its own consolidated common school district, but the district soon lost a substantial percentage of its size with the completion of Lake Texoma upstream. During the second half of the twentieth century the region just north of Walnut Bend was subject to recreational development, such as the Horseshoe Bend Recreational Area, to attract tourism to Lake Texoma. In 1990 Walnut Bend had a population of 100. That number declined to 59 in 2000.