DOG RIDGE, TEXAS. Dog Ridge is on U.S. Highway 190 three miles west of Belton in central Bell County. It is said to take its name from the dogs that settlers found running wild in the area after the Runaway Scrape in the 1830s. Dog Ridge School, or Mitchell School, was the focus of a common-school district by 1885 and had forty-two students in 1903; the school closed in 1918. The community grew after the completion of nearby Stillhouse Hollow Lake in the 1960s. Dog Ridge reported a population of 125 from the late 1960s through 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bell County Historical Commission, Story of Bell County, Texas (2 vols., Austin: Eakin Press, 1988).
