Somervell County Texas map
32.22° N · 97.77° W · County seat: Glen Rose · 191 sq mi
Only Rockwall County is smaller than Somervell's 191 square miles, and Somervell has one town of any size in them: Glen Rose, at the mouth of the Paluxy River. The limestone riverbed just upstream carries some of the clearest dinosaur trackways anywhere, which is why a county of 9,205 people supports a state park, a wildlife centre and a weekend tourist trade.
Centered near Glen Rose. The Brazos River forms the county's eastern edge; the Paluxy runs in from the west to meet it at the town.
Where Somervell County is
The county sits on the southwestern rim of the Dallas–Fort Worth area where the Brazos River leaves the Cross Timbers. Hood County is north, Johnson County east, Bosque County south and Erath County west. It was cut out of Hood County in 1875 — Hood itself was only nine years old at the time — and named for Alexander Somervell, a Texas Revolution soldier who later led the 1842 Somervell Expedition to the Rio Grande.
Fort Worth is about 45 miles northeast in a straight line and Waco 59 miles southeast, so Glen Rose is close enough to both to be a day trip and far enough from either to have stayed rural. Dallas is 69 miles northeast. The county is in the 25th congressional district and on Central Time.
Everything about the place is small: one city, no interstate, two state-numbered highways, and 191 square miles of which only about 5 are water. Of the 9,205 people counted in 2020, 2,673 lived inside Glen Rose and the rest were scattered across the countryside.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Glen Rose (county seat) | City | 2,673 |
Glen Rose is the only place in the county with more than a few hundred residents. The rest of the population lives in small communities such as Nemo, Rainbow and Paluxy and on the ranch country between them.
Roads
- US-67 – the through route, in from Cleburne and Johnson County to the east, across the Brazos and through Glen Rose, then west to Stephenville.
- SH-144 – runs north from Glen Rose to Granbury and south toward Meridian in Bosque County.
- FM 205 and FM 56 – the local roads out to Dinosaur Valley, Nemo and the river bottoms; FM 205 is the park road.
The Paluxy tracks
Dinosaur Valley State Park lies four miles west of Glen Rose off US-67 on FM 205. The Paluxy River there runs over flat Cretaceous limestone, and when the water is low the trackways are exposed in the riverbed itself: broad round prints left by long-necked sauropods and three-toed prints left by large theropods, in some places running alongside each other. They were made in coastal mud that later hardened, and the river has since stripped the covering rock off. Visitors wade the riverbed to see them, so the tracks are best in late summer and worst after rain. The park also has hiking and mountain-bike trails through juniper and oak on the bluffs above, and two fibreglass dinosaurs left over from the 1964 World's Fair stand near the entrance.
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, a drive-through conservation park on rough hill country a few miles southwest of town, keeps rhino, giraffe and other species on large enclosures and is the county's other main draw.
Comanche Peak
The Comanche Peak nuclear plant sits in the northwest of the county, about ten miles northwest of Glen Rose, with its two reactors cooled by Squaw Creek Reservoir — a purpose-built lake whose upper arms reach toward the Hood County line. The units came online in 1990 and 1993. The plant is by a wide margin the largest thing in Somervell County: its tax value is the reason a county this size can fund a hospital district, a large school plant and a county park, and its containment domes show above the ridgelines from several miles off.