PARKS, TEXAS. Parks was two miles south of the site of the present-day Stephens County Airport near U.S. Highway 183 in central Stephens County. The community developed as a result of two successful oil wells drilled in the area by the Texas Company (Later Texaco) in 1917. Subsequent drilling discovered large quantities of natural gas. As oil production increased the community grew rapidly and became a station on the Cisco and Northeastern Railway. A post office was established in 1920 with William R. Dillon as postmaster. Despite a decline in oil-related activities in the early 1920s, the town grew by the 1930s to include two businesses, the post office, and a reported population of 700. Changing economic conditions by the 1940s greatly curtailed the community's growth. The post office was discontinued in the early 1940s, and the population fell from a reported 250 in 1940 to eighty by 1945. By the mid-1960s only twenty residents were reported. The former oil town was not shown on 1980 county maps.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Betty E. Hanna, Doodle Bugs and Cactus Berries: A Historical Sketch of Stephens County (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975 Loy W. Hartsfield, A History of Stephens County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1929).
