QUINLAN, TEXAS. Quinlan is on State Highway 34 four miles west of Lake Tawakoni and twelve miles south of Greenville in south central Hunt County. The site was first known as Roberts, after Texas governor O. M. Roberts,^qv who on October 26, 1882, sold 100 acres of land in southern Hunt County to the Texas Central Railroad. This land, "situated between the South and Caddo forks on the Sabine River," served as the location of the new town of Roberts, to which the Northeastern Branch of the Texas Central built. The line was reorganized as the Texas Midland Railroad in 1886 by Hetty Green,^qv a bondholder in the defunct railroad, and the new road extended its track northward from Roberts through Greenville to Paris by 1894. In 1892 Edward H. R. Green,^qv Hetty Green's son and president of the Texas Midland, abandoned Roberts as a depot and established a new depot town, Quinlan, 1½ miles north of the older community. The new community took its name from George Austin Quinlan, vice president and general manager of the Houston and Texas Central Railway.

Settlers moved quickly into Quinlan. Some of the earliest, including John M. Cook and R. K. Epperson, moved their businesses from Roberts. The settlement received a post office in 1894, and by 1900 its population had reached 362. This growth, no doubt induced by the presence of the railroad, continued through the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1904 463 persons lived in Quinlan. The number rose to 537 by 1910 and 600 by 1914, when Quinlan had twenty businesses, including a bank and a weekly newspaper. In 1925 this "retail trade center for southern Hunt, northern Kaufman and Van Zandt counties" had an elementary school, a high school, and thirty-five businesses and managed a cotton harvest of some 5,000 bales. In 1933 Quinlan had 512 residents and thirty businesses; in 1952 the population of 599 supported twenty-five businesses; in 1964 the community had 621 persons and twenty-two businesses. After the mid-1960s Quinlan grew considerably, largely due to its proximity to Lake Tawakoni. It had a population of 900 in 1976 and 1,002 in 1988, when it had fifty-one businesses. In 1990 the population was 1,360. The population was 1,370 in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Walworth Harrison, History of Greenville and Hunt County, Texas (Waco: Texian, 1976).

Brian Hart