GREEN VALLEY, TEXAS (Denton County). Green Valley is north of Farm Road 428 about eight miles from Denton in northeastern Denton County. The townsite is in a valley between the Elm Fork of the Trinity River to the east and Clear Creek to the southwest. Fertile soil, plentiful timber, and a small stream, Culp Creek, attracted early settlers to the area. The community was originally called Toll Town, possibly because of its location at the crossroads of the stage lines from Sherman to Fort Worth and McKinney to Fort Richardson. Its name was changed to Green Valley at the suggestion of Henry Clay Wilmoth, the teacher at the first subscription school. He applied for a post office for the community, which was granted in 1874. Around that time the town had a blacksmith shop, three stores, and a population of fifty. Green Valley began to decline after 1881, when the Texas and Pacific Railway bypassed it and the post office closed. By the end of the decade, many businesses had moved to nearby Aubrey. In 1919 Denton annexed the Green Valley school district. In the early 1980s remnants of the community existed in the form of the old school building, used for social gatherings, and the small church and cemetery nearby. Much of the area's rich farmland had been secured by the United States Army Corps of Engineers for construction of Ray Roberts Lake (also known as Aubrey Reservoir). Some residents moved, while others broke their farms into smaller parcels for residential development. The graves from the Jackie Davis Cemetery, where the oldest stone bore the date 1859, were moved to various other cemeteries before the site was inundated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. A. Bridges, History of Denton, Texas, from Its Beginning to 1960 (Waco: Texian Press, 1978). Maude Smith Grace, History of Green Valley Community, 1870-1900 (Shawnee, Oklahoma: Herald Printing, 1944).

Jackie Balthrop Fuller