CALLISBURG, TEXAS. Callisburg is eleven miles northeast of Gainesville in eastern Cooke County. The town was near the Butterfield Overland Mailqv route and on the Mormon Trail, a route established in 1846 by a group of Mormons led by Lyman Wight,qv who were migrating to Texas. The community was named for blacksmith Sam Callis, the first settler there. By 1873 a post office had been established at the community in Billy Rousseau's dry-goods and grocery store, and ten years later Callisburg reported a population of 300, a school, and some twenty businesses, including a steam gristmill-cotton gin. By 1902, however, its population had declined to about 110, and its post office had closed. In 1902 residents thought an electric rail line was to be built between Gainesville and Sherman to the east; Callisburg was to be used as the headquarters for this line, but the project never developed. In 1924 the Big Indian Oil and Development Company Well No. 1 was drilled on B. W. Davis's farm, a mile east of Callisburg. The community's population level fluctuated between 110 and 200 until the early 1970s, when it dropped sharply to around sixty-eight. By 1980, however, Callisburg had become incorporated, and by 1988 its population had reached a new reported high of 329. In 1988 the town had two churches, two stores, a volunteer fire department, a city hall, a community center, and its own independent school district. Its population was 344 in 1990 and grew to 365 in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gainesville Daily Register, Centennial Edition, August 30, 1948. C. N. Jones, Early Days in Cooke County: 1848-1873 (Gainesville, Texas, 1936; rpt., Gainesville: Cooke County Heritage Society, 1977). A. Morton Smith, The First 100 Years in Cooke County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1955).
Robert Wayne McDaniel
