Wichita County, Texas

Wichita County Education, Geography, and History

Wichita County is a county located in the state of Texas. Based on the 2010 census, its population was 131,500. The county seat is Wichita Falls. The county was created in 1858 and organized in 1882.

Wichita County is part of the Wichita Falls, Texas, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Etymology - Origin of Wichita County Name

the Wichita Native American tribe

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: CensusBureau Quick Facts

Wichita County History

Wichita County is a county located in the US state of Texas. The county seat is Wichita Falls.

Handbook of Texas Online
The area that became Wichita County was home for Caddoan Indians, principally the Wichitas and Taovayas, who migrated to the area from present Kansas and Nebraska, in the middle of the eighteenth century. Despite their mastery of the horse- introduced into the region by Spanish explorers- and therefore the buffalo, these natives remained heavily dependent upon agriculture. The location of their lands, in extreme north central Texas, placed them in conflict with the Lipan Apaches and the Comanches, both of which claimed the area as their own territory and continued to visit it long after their removal to Oklahoma. The presence of often aggressive Native Americans caused difficulties for Anglo-American settlers in the region until after 1850, when the federal troops forced the Indians to relocate to reservations north of the Red River. A number of Europeans, beginning with the Spanish Indian trader Athanase de M?i?es, visited the area that became Wichita County during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among these were Pedro Vial and Jos?Mares, who crossed the region in the course of developing trails from San Antonio to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1786 and 1787, and members of the Texan Santa Fe expedition in 1841. Although local lands had been granted to survivors and heirs of soldiers who fought in the Texas Revolution as early as the 1830s, the first surveys of the area that is now Wichita County took place in 1854 under the direction of the Texan Emigration and Land Company. Mabel Gilbert, a pioneer of the settlement that became Dallas, became Wichita County's first permanent Anglo-American settler when he built a house on a bluff above the Red River, ten miles north of the site of present Wichita Falls, in 1855. Although Native Americans twice drove him from his isolated farm, in 1855 and 1862, he returned in 1867 and died there three years later. Wichita County was established by act of the Texas legislature on February 1, 1858, from the Cooke Land District, and was attached to Clay County for judicial purposes. The new county was named for the Wichita Indians, and settlement was hindered by Indian attacks. Most of the area's Anglo-American pioneers arrived after 1870, when school lands were purchased to become cattle ranches, which have remained an important part of the economy. More at
Brian Hart, "WICHITA COUNTY," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcw08), accessed January 24, 2016. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Geography: Land and Water

As reported by the Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 633 square miles (1,639 km²), of which, 628 square miles (1,626 km²) of it is land and 5 square miles (14 km²) of it (0.85%) is water.

Neighboring Counties

Bordering counties are as follows:

• Tillman County, Oklahoma (north)
• Cotton County, Oklahoma (northeast)
• Clay County (east)
• Archer County (south)
• Wilbarger County (west)

Education

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