EVANT, TEXAS. Evant is on U.S. Highway 84 some twenty-five miles west of Gatesville in western Coryell County. It was first called Langford Cove, for Asa Langford, who in the 1850s built a sawmill and general store half a mile south of the present site. A post office called Cove was opened in 1876 with Langford as postmaster. In the late 1870s Evant Brooks moved to the area from Alabama and bought 160 acres of land. He donated sixty acres for a townsite in 1881, and in 1884 the name of the community was changed to Evant in his honor. By the 1890s Evant had three general stores, a hotel, a gristmill, a cotton gin, and 120 residents. The town grew over the next four decades, and its population stabilized at 500 during the 1930s and 1940s. It reported its peak population of 550 in the 1950s. When Evant was incorporated in 1976 it had a population of 540. In 1988 it reported nine businesses and 422 residents. In the early 1990s its population was reported as 438, served by twenty businesses. By that time the community had spread into Hamilton County. In 2000 the population was 393 with thirty-one businesses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Coryell County Genealogical Society, Coryell County, Texas, Families, 1854-1985 (Dallas: Taylor, 1986). John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl