MOUND, TEXAS. Mound is on Farm Road 1829 eight miles southeast of Gatesville in eastern Coryell County. It took its name from the White Mound School, which had been named for a nearby white chalk hill. Settlers arrived in the area in the early 1850s, making the community one of the oldest in the county. The White Mound Baptist Church was established in 1874. In 1882 the Texas and St. Louis Railway Company laid track from Waco to Gatesville, passing through Mound. A post office was established there in 1884 with Isaac Franks as postmaster. By 1890 the community had a mill, a gin, a general store, and twenty-five residents. Mound was the focus of one of the county's common school districts, which in 1904 had two teachers and eighty-seven students. The community reached its peak between 1910 and 1920, when it had a cotton gin, two general stores, and 100 residents. In the mid-1920s the population was estimated at thirty-eight. The number of residents grew to eighty in the early 1940s but dropped to seventy-five in the late 1960s. The Mound school district was consolidated with the Gatesville Independent School District in 1971. The railroad company abandoned the track between Gatesville and Lime City in 1972, but residents of Mound had easy access to both State Highway 36 and U.S. Highway 84. In the 1980s a church, a post office, and a business marked the community on county highway maps. Most of the residents worked in neighboring communities. The population estimate through 2000 remained at seventy-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clyde and Mabel Bailey, Vignettes of Coryell County (Gatesville, Texas: Gatesville Printing, 1976). 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). Zelma Scott, History of Coryell County (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1965).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl