Burns City, TX

Burns City is on Farm Road 372 fifteen miles southeast of Gainesville in southeastern Cooke County. The community developed in 1881 when mineral water was discovered near the homesite of a man named Burns, who, convinced of the healing properties of the water in the forty-foot well, planned to turn the area into a health resort. He built a sixteen-room hotel in what became the town square. In 1882 a Masonic lodge became the second building on the square, and on June 2, 1884, the residents of the settlement by then known as Burns City voted to incorporate. A post office operated there from 1884 until 1907. Over the next few years the town added a flour mill and a cotton gin. By 1890 the town had an estimated population of 300 and eight businesses, though by the mid-1890s its hotel was no longer in operation. The population of Burns City had dropped below 100 by the 1920s and was twenty-five in 1956 and seventy-five in 1968. In the 1970s Burns City comprised the New Hope Church and a number of scattered dwellings. From the early 1970s through 2000 a population of sixty-one was reported.