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Texas Counties

Texas is divided into 254 counties, more than any other U.S. state Texas was originally divided into municipalities, a unit of local government under Spanish and Mexican rule. When the Republic of Texas gained its independence in 1836, there were 23 municipalities, which became the original Texas counties. Many of these would later be divided into new counties. The most recent county to be created was Kenedy County in 1921. The most recent county to be organized was Loving County in 1931

Cooke County, Texas

Cooke County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Gainesville
Year Organized: 1848
Square Miles: 874

Court House:

100 South Dixon Street
County Courthouse
Gainesville, TX 76240-4717

Etymology - Origin of County Name

William Gordon Cooke, a soldier during the Texas Revolution

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History

Cooke County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is named for William Gordon Cooke, a soldier during the Texas Revolution. The county seat is Gainesville

Cooke County was established by an act of the Texas legislature on March 20, 1848, and named for William G. Cooke,^qv a hero of the Texas Revolution.^qv The boundaries of the original county encompassed its present area, along with territory that became Montague, Clay, Wise, and Jack counties. Cooke County assumed its present boundaries in 1857. It was crossed by several early trails, including the Mormon Trail, a branch of the Chisholm Trail,^qv and the Butterfield Overland Mail^qv route. Settlements in the northern extension of the Peters colony^qv reached the southeastern edge of the county by the late 1840s. Fort Fitzhugh was established in 1847 to protect area settlements against Indian raids, the last of which occurred in the western part of the county in January 1868. Early settlers employed Daniel Montague^qv to locate a site for a county seat fifteen miles west of the Grayson county line. They planned to name the town Liberty, but the state rejected that name because another settlement near Houston had claimed it. Col. William F. Fitzhugh,^qv commander at the fort, proposed that the town be named for his former commander, Gen. Edmund Pendleton Gaines.^qv Gainesville, founded in 1850, has been the county seat since the organization of the county. The southern and eastern parts of the county were settled by people primarily from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. The western part had only scattered settlements prior to the late nineteenth century, when German land speculators founded the towns of Muenster in 1889 and Lindsay in 1891.

More at Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/hcc22.html (accessed November 5, 2008).

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 899 square miles (2,328 km²), of which, 874 square miles (2,263 km²) of it is land and 25 square miles (65 km²) of it (2.80%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Love County, Oklahoma (north)
Grayson County (east)
Denton County (south)
Wise County (southwest)
Montague County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Callisburg	city	Incorporated Area
- Gainesville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Lindsay	town	Incorporated Area
- Muenster	city	Incorporated Area
- Valley View	town	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

Online High Schools

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

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