1879 SKETCH OF

HOOD COUNTY, TEXAS

A

PICTORIAL HISTORY

OF

T E X A S,

From the earliest visits of European Adventurers,

to A. D. 1879.

Embracing the periods of missions, colonization, the Revolution, the Republic, and the state; also, a topographical description of the country; its rivers, mountains, soils, minerals, agricultural products, live stock, population, resources, wealth, etc.; together with its Indian tribes and their wars, and biographical sketches of hundreds of its leading historical characters.

~ ALSO, ~

List of the counties, with historical and topical notes, and descriptions of the public institutions of the state, asylums, penitentiary, schools, churches, railroads, etc.

FOURTH EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED.

BY REV. HOMER S. THRALL, A. M.

ST. LOUIS, MO.:

N. D. THOMPSON & CO.

1879.

COUNTY SKETCHES

Pages 669 - 670

67. HOOD. - Created from Johnson in 1866; named for John B. Hood. Granbury, named for General Granbury, is the county-seat. Bounded north by Parker, east by Johnson, south by Somervell, and west by Erath and Palo Pinto. It is small, having but 450 square miles. The county has a fair supply of timber and the land is rich and productive. Population in 1870, 2,585; assessed value of property in 1876, $689,523. Granbury is thirty-five miles from Fort Worth, the present terminus of the Texas Pacific Railroad. The county is situated on both sides of and embracing in its boundaries, nearly two hundred miles of that crooked stream, the Brazos river, into which Long, Rucker's, Walnut Fall, and George's creeks in the east, and Paloxy, Squaw, Stroud's, and Robinson's in the west, all supplied by springs and clear as crystal, empty. This county presents the combined advantages of abundant pure spring and well water; plenty of conveniently located timber; numerous fertile valleys, elevated rich post-oak table land, mingled prairie and timber lands, profusion of superior building-stone, while its location between the 32d and 33d degrees, and its romantic, picturesque, and, to a considerable extent, broken and rugged surface, renders its climate mild, equable, and salubrious. No malarious swamps, hog wallow prairies, or miasmatic ponds of stagnant water exist to sow disease and death. Near the centre rise the huge outlines of Comanche Peak, towering some 600 feet above the Brazos, a noted land-mark, and visible from nearly all parts of the county. The eastern and western edges of the county consist of prairies, bisected every few miles by beautiful, limpid running creeks, fringed with timber, and through the center runs the Brazos river, with its belt of timber from five to ten miles wide, and dotted here and there with many large, thrifty, and productive valley farms. The Brazos and its numerous tributaries furnish abundant water-power, and hundreds of fine manufacturing sites can be found at its countless falls, and in the numerous bends of the river.