e-ReferenceDesk's College and 50 State Learning Resource Guide

Find Online Colleges

Find Campus Colleges

Texas State...

Texas

Choose a County

Anderson, Andrews, Angelina, Aransas, Archer, Armstrong, Atascosa, Austin, Bailey, Bandera, Bastrop, Baylor, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Borden, Bosque, Bowie, Brazoria, Brazos, Brewster, Briscoe, Brooks, Brown, Burleson, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Camp, Carson, Cass, Castro, Chambers, Cherokee, Childress, Clay, Cochran, Coke, Coleman, Collin, Collingsworth, Colorado, Comal, Comanche, Concho, Cooke, Coryell, Cottle, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Culberson, Dallam, Dallas, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Delta, Denton, DeWitt, Dickens, Dimmit, Donley, Duval, Eastland, Ector, Edwards, El Paso, Ellis, Erath, Falls, Fannin, Fayette, Fisher, Floyd, Foard, Fort Bend, Franklin, Freestone, Frio, Gaines, Galveston, Garza, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Gray, Grayson, Gregg, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hale, Hall, Hamilton, Hansford, Hardeman, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Hartley, Haskell, Hays, Hemphill, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, Hockley, Hood, Hopkins, Houston, Howard, Hudspeth, Hunt, Hutchinson, Irion, Jack, Jackson, Jasper, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Jones, Karnes, Kaufman, Kendall, Kenedy, Kent, Kerr, Kimble, King, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, La Salle, Lamar, Lamb, Lampasas, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Limestone, Lipscomb, Live Oak, Llano, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Madison, Marion, Martin, Mason, Matagorda, Maverick, McCulloch, McLennan, McMullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Mills, Mitchell, Montague, Montgomery, Moore, Morris, Motley, Nacogdoches, Navarro, Newton, Nolan, Nueces, Ochiltree, Oldham, Orange, Palo Pinto, Panola, Parker, Parmer, Pecos, Polk, Potter, Presidio, Rains, Randall, Reagan, Real, Red River, Reeves, Refugio, Roberts, Robertson, Rockwall, Runnels, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, San Patricio, San Saba, Schleicher, Scurry, Shackelford, Shelby, Sherman, Smith, Somervell, Starr, Stephens, Sterling, Stonewall, Sutton, Swisher, Tarrant, Taylor, Terrell, Terry, Throckmorton, Titus, Tom Green, Travis, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Van Zandt, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wharton, Wheeler, Wichita, Wilbarger, Willacy, Williamson, Wilson, Winkler, Wise, Wood, Yoakum, Young, Zapata, Zavala

Texas Counties

Click Image to Enlarge

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

Donley County, Texas

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

County Seat: Clarendon
Year Organized: 1876
Square Miles: 930

Court House:

P.O. Box 909
County Courthouse
Clarendon, TX 79226-0909

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Stockton P. Donley, a frontier lawyer

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Donley County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is named for Stockton P. Donley, a frontier lawyer. Its county seat is Clarendon.

The legendary cattle baron Charles Goodnight spent his later years in Donley County. It was also the home of historian Harley True Burton, author of A History of the JA Ranch, which Goodnight formerly co-owned. Burton was president of Clarendon College and the mayor of Clarendon from 1955-1963. The JA Ranch is located in the counties of Donley, Hall, Briscoe, and Armstrong.

Donley County is also the home of Republican U.S. Representative Mac Thornberry.

The area that is now Donley County was part of the domain of the Plains Apaches until the eighteenth century, when Comanches and Kiowas entered the region. Several Spanish and American explorers came through the area; in 1787 Pedro Vial^qv crossed the county, and in 1788 Santiago Fernández followed Vial's route. Americans did not enter the region until 1852, when captains Randolph B. Marcy and George B. McClellan^qqv led their military surveying exploration of the Red River system into the area. The region remained the Indians' domain until the Red River War^qv of 1874-75. On September 7, 1874, during Col. Nelson A. Miles's^qv campaign, Lt. Frank D. Baldwin^qv and a scout fought their way out of a Cheyenne ambush on Whitefish Creek in the northeastern section of what is now Donley County. The subsequent defeat of the Indians and their confinement to reservations in Indian Territory left the area open to white settlement. In 1876 the area was separated from the jurisdiction of the Bexar District, briefly assigned to Wegefarth County,^qv and finally designated Donley County.

More at Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/hcd10.html (accessed November 5, 2008).

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 933 square miles (2,417 km²), of which, 930 square miles (2,408 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (8 km²) of it (0.35%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Gray County (north)
Collingsworth County (east)
Hall County (south)
Briscoe County (southwest)
Armstrong County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Clarendon (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Hedley	city	Incorporated Area
- Howardwick	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this 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."