Kaufman County Texas map
32.60° N · 96.29° W · County seat: Kaufman · 808 sq mi
Kaufman County is the Metroplex spilling east across the Trinity River. It has been among the fastest-growing counties in the United States for a decade: 145,310 people at the 2020 census, an estimated 197,800 four years later, most of that arriving in Forney, Terrell and Crandall along I-20 and US-175.
Centered on Kaufman County. The pin marks the town of Kaufman; Terrell and Forney line the I-20/US-80 corridor across the north.
Where Kaufman County is
The county begins about 20 miles southeast of downtown Dallas and runs another 30 miles out into the Blackland Prairie. The Trinity River forms its southwestern boundary with Ellis County, and the river's East Fork comes down through the middle of the county to join it. Its other neighbors are Rockwall and Dallas counties northwest, Hunt northeast, Van Zandt east and Henderson southeast.
Kaufman County was created in 1848 out of Henderson County and named for David Spangler Kaufman, a Texas state senator who went on to serve in the U.S. House — the second Jewish member of that body. The land is deep black clay, cotton country for a century and now subdivision country.
Mesquite is 21 miles northwest, Dallas 32 miles northwest and Garland 30 miles northwest. Of 808 square miles, 27 are water. Central Time; 5th congressional district.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Forney | City | 23,493 |
| Terrell | City | 17,657 |
| Kaufman (county seat) | City | 7,215 |
| Crandall | City | 3,860 |
| Mabank (part) | Town | 2,836 |
| Talty | Town | 2,504 |
| Combine (part) | City | 1,376 |
| Kemp | City | 1,133 |
| Oak Ridge | Town | 781 |
| Post Oak Bend | City | 689 |
| Scurry | Town | 688 |
| Oak Grove | Town | 654 |
| Poetry (part) | Town | 412 |
| Grays Prairie | Village | 323 |
Mabank, Combine and Poetry cross county lines; only the Kaufman County share is counted. The county seat is not the largest city — Forney passed both Terrell and Kaufman and by the 2024 estimate is above 38,000.
Roads
- Interstate 20 – crosses the north of the county through Forney and Terrell, the route from Dallas to Tyler, Shreveport and beyond.
- U.S. 80 – the old Bankhead Highway, running alongside I-20 through the same towns and carrying the local traffic.
- U.S. 175 – the diagonal from south Dallas through Crandall and Kaufman toward Athens; it is a freeway for much of its run through the county.
- SH-34 – north–south through Terrell and Kaufman, connecting the two corridors.
- SH-205 – north from Kaufman through Terrell's west side to Rockwall.
- SH-243 – east from Kaufman toward Canton in Van Zandt County.
- SH-274 and SH-198 – south toward Kemp, Mabank and the Cedar Creek Reservoir shore.
Water
The county has no large reservoir of its own but touches two. The northwestern tip reaches Lake Ray Hubbard, the Dallas water supply on the East Fork of the Trinity; the southeastern corner around Kemp and Mabank touches the northern end of Cedar Creek Reservoir, which lies mostly in Henderson County. Kaufman Lake, a small city reservoir, sits near the county seat. The Trinity itself is levee-bounded and largely inaccessible along the Ellis County line.
Terrell and the RAF cadets
Terrell, on the Texas and Pacific line, was the county's largest town for most of its history. Two institutions shaped it. The first was the state hospital, opened in 1885 as the North Texas Lunatic Asylum and still one of the state's psychiatric hospitals; for generations it was the town's biggest employer.
The second arrived in 1941, before the United States entered the war. The No. 1 British Flying Training School opened at the Terrell airfield to teach Royal Air Force cadets to fly in weather that England could not offer, and it ran until 1945, putting more than two thousand British airmen through primary and basic training. Twenty of them died in training accidents and are buried in the Terrell cemetery, where the graves are still tended; a museum at the airport keeps the school's records and aircraft.
West of Terrell, Forney has taken a different route into the county's history — the legislature named it the Antique Capital of Texas in the 1980s for the shops along US-80, though the town's growth since 2000 has been driven by rooftops rather than by antiques.