Gainesville, Texas
| Gainesville, Texas | |
|---|---|
| City | |
Highway 82, Lawrence Street
|
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| Motto: "The Star of North Texas" | |
 Location of Gainesville, Texas |
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| Coordinates: 33°37′49″N 97°8′25″W / 33.63028°N 97.14028°WCoordinates: 33°37′49″N 97°8′25″W / 33.63028°N 97.14028°W | |
| Country |
 United States
|
| State |
 Texas
|
| County | Cooke |
| Government | |
| • City Council |
Mayor Jim Goldsworthy Mayor Pro-Tem Ray Nichols (Ward 5) Carolyn Hendricks (Ward 1) Beverly Snuggs (Ward 2) Keith Clegg (Ward 3) Kenneth Keeler (Ward 4) Mary Jo Dollar (Ward 6) |
| • City Manager | Barry Sullivan |
| • City Attorney | Belvin (Bill) Harris |
| • Fire Chief | Wally Cox |
| • Police Chief | Kevin Phillips |
| Area | |
| • Total | 19.04 sq mi (49.32 km2) |
| • Land | 19.02 sq mi (49.25 km2) |
| • Water | 0.03 sq mi (0.07 km2) |
| Elevation | 751 ft (229 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 16,002 |
| • Density | 841/sq mi (324.9/km2) |
| Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| ZIP codes | 76240-76241 |
| Area code(s) | 940 |
| FIPS code | 48-27984 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1373791 |
| Website | www |
Gainesville is a city in and the county seat of Cooke County, Texas, United States. The population was 16,002 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Texoma region.
Founded in 1850, the city of Gainesville was established on a 40-acre (16 ha) tract of land donated by Mary E. Clark. City residents called their new community "Liberty", which proved short-lived, as a Liberty, Texas, already existed. It was suggested by one of the original settlers of Cooke County, Colonel William Fitzhugh, that the town be named after General Edmund Pendleton Gaines. Gaines, a United States general under whom Fitzhugh had served, had been sympathetic with the Texas Revolution.
The first hint of prosperity arrived with the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach in September 1858, bringing freight, passengers, and mail. During the Civil War, the Great Hanging at Gainesville, a controversial trial and hanging of 40 suspected Union loyalists, brought the new town to the attention of the state and came close to ripping the county apart. In the decade after the Civil War, Gainesville had its first period of extended growth, catalyzed by the expansion of the cattle industry in Texas. Gainesville, only 7 miles (11 km) from the Oklahoma border, became a supply point for cowboys driving herds north to Kansas. The merchants of Gainesville reaped considerable benefits from the passing cattle drives.
Within 20 years, the population increased from a few hundred to more than 2,000. Gainesville was incorporated on February 17, 1873, and by 1890 was established as a commercial and shipping point for area ranchers and farmers. In the late 1870s two factors drastically altered the historic landscape of North Central Texas. The first of these was barbed wire. In 1875, Henry B. Sanborn, a regional sales agent for Joseph Glidden's Bar Fence Company of DeKalb, Illinois, traveled to Texas. That autumn, he chose Gainesville as one of his initial distribution points for the newly invented barbed wire which his employer had patented the previous year. On his first visit to Gainesville, he sold ten reels of the wire to the Cleaves and Fletcher hardware store—the first spools of barbed wire ever sold in Texas.
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Wikipedia