Cooke County Texas map
33.64° N · 97.21° W · County seat: Gainesville · 899 sq mi · Central Time
Every vehicle driving I-35 from Texas into Oklahoma passes through Cooke County. The interstate crosses the Red River eight miles north of Gainesville, and that single fact — being the last Texas county on the main road to Kansas City — has shaped the place since it was a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route.
Gainesville sits on I-35 near the middle of the county. The Red River and the Oklahoma line run along the north; US-82 crosses east to west.
Where Cooke County is
Cooke was created in 1848 from Fannin County — the same parent that produced Denton, Collin and Grayson — and organized the next year. It is named for William Gordon Cooke, a soldier of the Texas Revolution.
Love County, Oklahoma lies across the Red River to the north. On the Texas side the county borders Grayson to the east, Denton to the south, Wise to the southwest and Montague to the west. The county is part of the Texoma country along the river rather than the Metroplex, though the suburban edge is closing in: the city of Denton is only about 30 miles south down I-35, and Sherman is 35 miles east on US-82.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Gainesville | City · county seat | 17,384 |
| Muenster | City | 1,536 |
| Lindsay | City | 1,047 |
| Road Runner | Town | 767 |
| Valley View | City | 738 |
| Callisburg | City | 315 |
| Oak Ridge | Town | 238 |
Roads
- I-35 / US-77 – runs the length of the county from the Denton line at Valley View, past Gainesville, to the Red River bridge into Oklahoma. This is the only stretch of I-35 in the Metroplex area that is not split into an E and a W branch; the two rejoin 30 miles south at Denton.
- US-82 – the east–west route, from Nocona and Montague County through Muenster, Lindsay and Gainesville and on to Whitesboro and Sherman.
- FM-51 – south out of Gainesville toward Slidell and Decatur, the shortcut to the Fort Worth side of the metro.
- FM-372 and FM-902 – the local roads north toward the river crossings at Sivells Bend and east toward Callisburg.
The German colonies
Muenster and Lindsay, both on US-82 west of Gainesville, were founded in the 1880s as German Catholic farm colonies and still show it: each town is laid out around a large brick church, and Muenster runs a Germanfest every spring. The surrounding country is dairy and small-grain farmland on the eastern edge of the Cross Timbers, with the sandy oak belt giving way to prairie as you move east toward Grayson County.
Gainesville and the river
Gainesville grew up where the California Road and later the Butterfield stage route crossed the upper Trinity headwaters, and it became a cattle town on the Chisholm Trail before the Missouri–Kansas–Texas railroad arrived. Its darkest episode came in October 1862, when a citizens' court tried men accused of Unionist sympathies and dozens were hanged over about two weeks — the Great Hanging at Gainesville, the largest mass lynching in American history.
Today the town's landmark on the interstate is the Frank Buck Zoo, named for the Gainesville-born animal collector, and the outlet mall at the I-35 exit that catches Oklahoma traffic. North of town the Red River braids through sand flats; the county's 24 square miles of water are mostly river channel and farm ponds rather than any single reservoir, which sets Cooke apart from its lake-heavy neighbours to the east and south.