"Farms and Ranches" Nevada by grandmaR

Farm sign

After I landed at DFW, I rented a car, and drove to Nevada to meet a friend whom I had only known through correspondance. She gave me driving directions to her farm and this was the first time I met up with the TX farm roads.

The name of her farm comes from the fact that both she and her husband are mathmeticians.

Nevada is a very small town. I can't even find that there are any business at all located in Nevada aside from the water company, so I don't have any particular tips. I had dinner with my friend, and she showed me her farm and her horse (who lived in her garage), and then she gave me directions to get to my hotel.

Statistics & Facts

The population of Nevada is approximately 456.
The approximate number of families is 172.

The amount of land area in Nevada is 2.225 sq. kilometers.
The amount of surface water is 0 sq kilometers.
The distance from Nevada to Washington DC is 1199 miles. The distance to the Texas state capital is 205 miles. (as the crow flies)
Nevada is positioned 33.03 degrees north of the equator and 96.37 degrees west of the prime meridian.

My friend leading her horse back to the 'stable'

The "NEVADA, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. [Accessed Sun May 23 8:16:30 US/Central 2004 ]. has the following to say about Nevada.

Nevada is on Farm Road 1138 two miles east of Lavon Lake in southeastern Collin County. The rich soils of the Blackland Prairies and the water provided by Bear Creek attracted settlers to the area as early as the mid-1840s. The first organized community in the area was McMinn Chapel, established in the early 1840s four miles north of the site of present Nevada. For the most part the residents of the community were the family and friends of its founder, John McMinn. In 1861 Granville Stinebaugh moved to Texas from Missouri and purchased 160 acres of land near McMinn Chapel. Shortly thereafter the town of Nevada was established on his farm and named by Stinebaugh in honor of Nevada Territory, which he had passed through on his way to search for gold in California. The town received a post office on August 3, 1880. Eight years later the tracks of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway reached the community. In 1889 Nevada incorporated, choosing an aldermanic form of government. From the 1880s to the 1920s Nevada served as a retail market for a small but populous farming territory. The population of the town grew from an estimated fifty in 1885 to 578 in 1920. By 1925 Nevada provided its 625 residents with paved roads, electricity, a telephone exchange, twenty-five businesses, and a high school. On May 9, 1927, a tornado struck the town. Twenty-seven people were killed, seventy-five were injured, and approximately $1 million in property damage occurred. Nevada never recovered from this disaster. The Great Depressionqv and the mechanization of farming further retarded the growth of the town. By 1950 the population had decreased to 386, and it remained near this figure for the next thirty years. In 1980 Nevada had an estimated 400 residents served by four businesses. In 1990 the population was 456.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Lee and Lillian J. Stambaugh, A History of Collin County (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1958). Ellen Jeanene Walker, Agricultural Land Utilization in Collin County (M.A. thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1969).

David Minor

The Handbook of Texas Online is a joint project of The General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association.

At the bottom of each page of the Handbook of Texas Online, they have a preferred method to cite the page, and I have followed that method.