GARNER, TEXAS. Garner is on Farm Road 113 fourteen miles northwest of Weatherford in west central Parker County. The first settlers arrived in the area in the mid-1850s. The twenty or so families who made up the town's population opened a school and called the place Trapps Springs. Development of an established community began in the late 1880s a half mile west of the original site. By 1890 the community had a post office branch and a new name, Garner, chosen in honor of a local gin operator, Ab (or C. B.) Bumgarner. The arrival of the Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern Railway established Garner as a retail and shipping point for the area. For most of the twentieth century Garner was a church and school community for local farmers. In 1914 it had forty residents and five businesses. The population was seventy-five in 1947 and ninety-eight in 1980 and 1990. The post office was discontinued about 1970. The population was 196 in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982).

David Minor