Hamilton County Texas map
31.71° N · 98.11° W · County seat: Hamilton · 836 sq mi
Hamilton County is 836 square miles of Leon River ranch country with 8,222 people on it and no town over 3,000. It sits on the broken ground where the Lampasas Cut Plain meets the Cross Timbers, which is why the land here runs to cattle, goats and hay rather than row crops.
Hamilton is at the centre where US-281 and SH-36 cross the Leon River. Hico is 20 miles north on US-281, and Evant sits at the southern tip on the Coryell County line.
Where Hamilton County is
It sits on the northwestern shoulder of Central Texas, between the Hill Country and the Fort Worth prairie. Six counties border it: Erath north, Bosque northeast, Coryell southeast, Lampasas south, Mills southwest and Comanche northwest. Killeen is 47 miles southeast in a straight line, Waco 58 miles southeast, Temple 62 miles southeast and Fort Worth 86 miles northeast.
Nothing here is close to an interstate. I-35 lies about 60 miles east and I-20 about 70 miles north, so US-281 does the through-traffic work by itself, and Hamilton is the last full-service town on it for a long stretch in either direction.
The county was created in 1856 out of Bosque, Comanche and Lampasas counties and organised in 1858. It is named for James Hamilton Jr., governor of South Carolina from 1830 to 1832, who raised money and credit for the Republic of Texas and was later granted Texas land for it; he never lived here.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Hamilton | City (county seat) | 2,891 |
| Hico (part) | City | 1,327 |
| Evant (part) | Town | 130 |
Only three incorporated places, and two of them straddle county lines — Hico across the Erath line, Evant across the Coryell line, with most of Evant's residents on the Coryell side. Cranfills Gap, on the northeastern boundary, is mostly in Bosque County. Between them the incorporated places hold barely more than half the county's people; the rest live at Pottsville, Fairy, Aleman, Carlton, Shive, Pearl, Jonesboro and the other crossroads communities, several of which still have a church and a cemetery and little else.
Roads
- US-281 – the main north–south route, entering from Erath County through Hico, running through Hamilton and leaving south through Evant toward Lampasas and San Antonio.
- US-84 – across the northeastern corner past Hico toward Iredell and Stephenville, the fastest way toward Waco in the other direction.
- State Highway 36 – northwest–southeast through Hamilton, toward Comanche one way and Gatesville the other.
- State Highway 6 – northeast out of the county toward Meridian and Clifton in Bosque County.
- State Highway 22 – east from Hamilton toward Cranfills Gap and the Bosque County hills.
- State Highway 220 – the short connector northeast from Hamilton toward Iredell.
The Leon River country
The Leon River comes in from Comanche County, runs southeast past the city of Hamilton and leaves toward Coryell County and Belton Lake, and its valley is the county's best land. Away from it, the ground rises into flat-topped limestone ridges with shallow soil, live oak and cedar — the Lampasas Cut Plain, the eroded southern edge of the Cross Timbers.
That country supports livestock and not much else. Beef cattle are the mainstay, and Hamilton sits inside the belt of counties that made Texas the leading producer of sheep, Angora goats and mohair in the United States; goats work the cedar brakes on ground that will not carry cattle, and the county's auction barn is one of the reasons the town of Hamilton exists at the size it does. Hay, small grains and pecans along the river bottoms fill out the rest. The county has essentially no surface water — the Census records less than a square mile of it — so there is no reservoir here and no lake recreation.
Hico and the man who said he was Billy the Kid
Hico, on the Bosque River in the north of the county, has traded on one story since 1950. Ollie L. Roberts, known as Brushy Bill, lived his last years there and claimed to be Billy the Kid, saying Pat Garrett had shot someone else in 1881. He sought a pardon from Governor Coke Stevenson, did not get one, and died in Hico later that year. The claim has never been accepted by historians, but the Billy the Kid Museum in the middle of town keeps it alive, along with a statue of the Kid on the downtown corner.
Hico's older business district, built after the Texas Central Railroad arrived in the 1880s, is the reason the town outlasted its neighbours; it now works as a stop for weekend traffic on US-281 between Fort Worth and the Hill Country.