Hood County Texas map
32.43° N · 97.83° W · County seat: Granbury · 437 sq mi
Hood County is where the Brazos River bends through the Cross Timbers southwest of Fort Worth. The river was dammed in 1969 to make Lake Granbury, which runs straight past the county seat, and Granbury's 1890 courthouse square was restored early enough that the whole block reads as a nineteenth-century town.
Centered on Hood County. The pin marks Granbury; Lake Granbury is the long narrow reservoir following the Brazos through the middle of the county.
Where Hood County is
Hood is a compact county — 437 square miles, one of the smaller ones in North Texas — on the southwestern rim of the Metroplex. Fort Worth is 37 miles northeast, close enough that Granbury has become a commuter town as well as a retirement one. Its neighbors are Parker County north, Johnson County east, Somervell County south, Erath County west and Palo Pinto County northwest.
The county was cut from Johnson County in 1866 and named for John Bell Hood, the Confederate general who commanded Hood's Texas Brigade. Granbury takes its name from another Confederate general, Hiram Granbury. The terrain is the Western Cross Timbers: post oak and cedar on sandy ridges, with limestone bluffs where the Brazos has cut down through them.
Arlington is 47 miles northeast and Dallas 65 miles northeast. Central Time; 25th congressional district.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Granbury (county seat) | City | 10,955 |
| DeCordova | City | 3,010 |
| Tolar | City | 948 |
| Cresson (part) | City | 713 |
| Lipan | City | 505 |
| Stockton Bend | City | 382 |
Cresson straddles the Hood, Parker and Johnson county lines; the figure above counts only the Hood County part. DeCordova and Stockton Bend both incorporated around lakeside subdivisions.
Roads
- U.S. 377 – the main road, running southwest to northeast across the whole county: Tolar, Granbury, Cresson, then on to Benbrook and Fort Worth. Southwest it continues to Stephenville.
- SH-144 – south from Granbury across the Brazos to Glen Rose in Somervell County.
- SH-171 – east from Granbury to Cleburne, continuing southeast toward Hill County.
- Loop 567 – the bypass around the north and east sides of Granbury, carrying US-377 traffic past the square.
There is no interstate in Hood County. Traffic from Fort Worth reaches it either on US-377 or by way of the Chisholm Trail Parkway to Cleburne and then SH-171.
Lake Granbury and the Brazos
The Brazos River Authority closed De Cordova Bend Dam in 1969, and the water backed up more than 30 river miles in a narrow, twisting pool that stays close to the old channel. That shape gives Lake Granbury far more shoreline than its surface area suggests, and almost all of it is developed — the subdivisions of DeCordova and Stockton Bend exist because of it. Public access is limited to city parks in Granbury and a handful of ramps.
Just over the southern county line, the Comanche Peak nuclear plant sits on Squaw Creek Reservoir near Glen Rose in Somervell County. Its two reactors came online in the early 1990s and it remains the largest single employer in the immediate area.
The Granbury square
The Hood County courthouse of 1890 is limestone with a mansard roof and a clock tower, and the commercial buildings that face it on all four sides survived rather than being replaced. Restoration work began in the 1970s, and the Granbury Opera House — an 1886 building on the square — reopened as a working theatre in 1975. The square now runs on tourism from the Metroplex: it fills on weekends and for the Christmas lighting.
Southeast of Granbury, Acton State Historic Site marks the grave of Elizabeth Crockett, second wife of David Crockett, who came to Texas on the land grant earned by his service and died here in 1860. The site is a fraction of an acre inside a working cemetery and is the smallest unit in the Texas state park system.