Callisburg, TX - Population 353
N 33° 41.456 W 097° 00.276
14S E 684949 N 3729675
Callisburg, TX, population 353 as of this posting. The sign is located on the east side of FM 678, at the southern city limit, with Thrasher Rd to the north and CR 111 to the south.
Waymark Code: WME1QK
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/22/2012
Views: 2
The City of Callisburg says this about the city's history: (
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Callisburg is eleven miles northeast of Gainesville in eastern Cooke County. The town was near the Butterfield Overland Mail route and on the Mormon Trail. The community was named for blacksmith Samuel Loranzus Callis, the first settler in the area, who drilled a water well for the public. Callis was appointed the settlement's first postmaster in 1873 when a post office was established in Billy Rousseau's dry-goods and grocery store. Then years later, Callisburg reported a population of 300, a school, and some twenty businesses, including a steam gristmill-cotton gin. By 1902, Callisburg's population had declined to about 110, and its post office had closed. At this time, Callisburg experienced a brief boom when residents thought an electric rail line was to be built between Gainesville and Sherman and Callisburg was to be used as the headquarters for this line, but the project never developed and the boom was over by 1905.
In 1918, Irene Hathaway, a single, traveling saleslady for an encyclopedia company from Kansas City appeared in the county where she learned from a prospective oilman of rumors about tremendous underground reservoirs of petroleum just waiting to be found in northeastern Cooke County. In 1922, she returned with representatives of the Big Indian Oil Company who obtained leases and began drilling on the Bud W. Davis farm near Callisburg. Two years passed with no luck and company officials were preparing to abandon their leases in early November of 1924, but Hathaway persuaded them to continue for a few more months even promising to pay the field workers from her own purse. Just a few days later, on November 9, 1924, Cooke County's first producing oil well came in drilled by C.A. Doudrick's Big Indian Oil Company heralding the beginning of a multi-million dollar industry and a new life style for the surrounding farm community. The discovery well continued to produce until 1970.