WALLING, TEXAS. Walling is off Farm Road 744 twelve miles southeast of Hillsboro in southeastern Hill County. The town developed around the home of Alonzo Dru Walling, who settled on a 480-acre tract in 1883. About 1885 Walling surveyed a portion of his property and laid out a townsite, which went by the names Walling and Walling Village. A post office began operating there in 1897. In 1902, when the International-Great Northern Railroad extended its tracks across the county, the community of Walling relocated some two miles east of its original location. This new settlement, which retained the name Walling, became a stop on the railroad. The rail connection encouraged growth in the town. In 1905, however, this growth was threatened, when the town of Malone was established southwest of Walling at the intersection of the tracks of the International-Great Northern and the recently arrived Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway. Like Walling, Malone was on land owned by A. D. Walling. The presence of two railroads in Malone, with each operating a station, drew settlers and business enterprises from Walling, thereby ensuring the simultaneous growth of Malone and decline of Walling. From the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s sixty-six people lived in Walling. The community's last reported population was fifty in 1948, when it had one business. Walling was still listed as a community in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hill County Historical Commission, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1853-1980 (Waco: Texian, 1980). Hillsboro Evening Mirror, June 18, 1930.

Brian Hart