Hunt County is a part of the rich black soil known as the Texas Blackland Prairie that encompassed 12.6 million acres. It begins below the Red River in North Texas, cutting through Central Texas, and ending South of San Antonio.[1] Before Anglo settlement, these areas featured tall native grasses such as Indian grass, bluestem, eastern grama grass, switch grass, paspalum, panicum and others.[2] The expansive open grasslands also featured dense forestry of elm, Bois D’arc, oak and cottonwood trees.
[1] Jim Conrad, Blacklands: Historical Sketches of Hunt County, Texas (Hunt County Historical Commission, 1992), page 1
[2] Conrad, Blacklands, page 6.
The Texas Blackland Prairie features rolling grass prairies that provided bountiful agriculture opportunities for Native Americans, early settlers, and current day farmers. Domestic animals such as horses, cattle, and sheep thrived on the grassland.[1] Its topography was instrumental to Hunt County’s establishment and many of its rural communities. The dense forestry featured sturdy materials for the first settlers lodging. Nineteenth Century newspapers and advertisements for land in the 1880s often mentioned the “black soil” which provided the potential for a wide variety of croplands such as corn and grains and orchards of peaches, apples and pecans. With the establishment of the railroad in the 1880s, cotton grew in profitability by easing of the transportation of cotton bales to market.
The semi-tropical climate provided mild rainfalls that affected transportation before the railroad by hindering movement of people, and the establishment of distant rural communities. Roads and paths would quickly become impassable when wet and the clayey soil would thicken. The mild winters, and long summers would offer long growing seasons provided there was sufficient rainfall.
[1] Conrad, Blacklands, page 6.
Hunt County depended on surface water (rain, creeks, & river) for most of their agricultural and household use. Farmers dug pools to collect water for livestock and built cisterns for domestic use. After WWI, some farmers began to build cisterns above ground that were made from 4ft sheets of metal welded into large tanks 8 ft wide. These tanks could be stacked 3 high. When rural electricity was introduced, many homeowners installed small electric pumps to pump water out of the cisterns into the house, while water for the bathroom was pumped from the pool. Even by being careful, the cisterns and tanks often ran out of water in June and July. Those who ran out of water were forced to purchase it, usually at a nickel a barrel, from those few who had a surplus.
In 1889, the Greenville Water and Electric Light Company constructed a dam on the Sabine River that created a large reservoir several miles upstream. That water was pumped into a large water tower and disbursed by gravity through the mains to the fire hydrants and homeowners. In 1910 there was a severe drought, and the Sabine went completely dry. The city of Greenville had to haul tanks of water in on the train. While Greenville did not have any useable underground water the city of Commerce did and built a number of deep wells. In fact, downtown Commerce had several wells just for general public use.
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