BELFALLS, TEXAS. Belfalls is at the intersection of Farm roads 935 and 438, nine miles northeast of Temple in northeastern Bell County. Its name is a combination of county names, Bell and Falls. It once had a double voting box, one for Falls County and one for Bell County. A Belfalls post office was opened in 1891, and by 1896 the community had 260 inhabitants, a hotel, a Baptist church, a mill and gin, two general stores, and two "capitalists." The Belfalls school had sixty-nine pupils and two teachers in 1903. In 1907 the post office was discontinued, and mail service was routed through Oenaville. Around 1915 mule power was used to dig the lake that supplies water to Belfalls Water Company. The population of Belfalls had dropped to eighty-four by 1933, but in 1947 the town had six businesses and 200 inhabitants. A second decline followed in the 1950s, and the population fell to fifty in 1964 and twenty in 1988, 1990, and 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bell County Historical Commission, Story of Bell County, Texas (2 vols., Austin: Eakin Press, 1988).
