CUNDIFF, TEXAS. Cundiff is on Farm Road 1810 ten miles northeast of Jacksboro in northeastern Jack County. Settlement of the area began in the mid-1850s. Harrell Cundiff was one of the first settlers. The threat of Indian raids forced many settlers to abandon their homesteads in the 1860s. Following the removal of Indians from Jack County in the mid-1870s, settlers began returning to the Cundiff area. Not until the early 1890s, however, was a permanent community established. In 1891 Walker Moore subdivided a tract of land into small farms and laid out a townsite, which he named Cundiff. The town had a post office from 1891 to 1918. By the early 1900s it also had a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, four stores, and a school. From 1940 to 1988 the town's population remained at approximately fifty residents. In 1990 and again in 2000 it was forty-five.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Thomas F. Horton, History of Jack County (Jacksboro, Texas: Gazette Print, 193-? Ida Lasater Huckabay, Ninety-Four Years in Jack County (Austin: Steck, 1949; centennial ed., Waco: Texian Press, 1974).
