Caddo Mills is at the intersection of State Highway 66 and Farm Road 36, eight
miles southwest of Greenville in southwestern Hunt County. Caddo Indians
were early inhabitants and camped in the area near the banks of Caddo Creek.
The first arrived in the late 1850s. Twenty years later I. T. Johnson and Henry
King built a gristmill a mile west of the present townsite. Shortly thereafter, a
store opened and a community developed. Residents in the area referred to
the community as Caddo Mills, after Johnson and King's gristmill. On June 16,
1879, a post office opened. By the early 1880s the settlement had 100
residents, three churches, a school, and at least a dozen businesses. In 1886
the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad reached the area. As a
depot of the Katy, Caddo Mills grew rapidly over the next few decades. By
1892 the number of businesses doubled and the population increased to 500.
In 1897 the Caddo Mills Banner began weekly publication. The State National
Bank opened in 1905. The town's population reached 700 on the eve of World
War I,qv then fell to 600 in the 1920s. By the early 1940s Caddo Mills had
incorporated; the population was reported as 390 and the number of
businesses as twenty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Walworth Harrison, History of Greenville and Hunt County,
Texas (Waco: Texian, 1976).
Population (year 2000): 1,149
Est. population in July 2002: 1,170 (+1.8% change)
Males: 521 (45.3%)
Females: 628 (54.7%)
Elevation: 529 feet
County: Hunt
Land area: 2.6 square miles
Zip code: 75135
Median resident age: 35.3 years
Median household income: $36,071 (year 2000)
Median house value: $51,000 (year 2000)
