Hunt County Texas map
33.12° N · 96.08° W · County seat: Greenville · 882 sq mi
Hunt County is the northeastern corner of the Metroplex commute, split diagonally by Interstate 30. Greenville, the seat, grew on cotton and then on aircraft: the airfield on its south side has been modifying military planes since the Second World War. Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of that war, was born in the county in 1925.
Centered on Hunt County. The pin marks Greenville on I-30; Lake Tawakoni fills the southeastern corner along the Sabine River.
Where Hunt County is
Hunt sits about 50 road miles northeast of downtown Dallas, on the line where the Blackland Prairie ends and the timber begins — the eastern edge of the county already has pines. Eight counties touch it, more than most: Fannin north, Delta northeast, Hopkins east, Rains and Van Zandt southeast, Kaufman south, Rockwall southwest and Collin west.
Created in 1846 from parts of Fannin and Nacogdoches counties, it carries the name of Memucan Hunt Jr., who served the Republic of Texas as its minister to Washington and later as secretary of the navy. Of its 882 square miles, 42 are water, most of that Lake Tawakoni.
McKinney is 33 miles west, Garland 35 miles southwest and Sherman 47 miles northwest. The county's population grew from 99,956 in 2020 to a 2024 Census estimate near 118,700. Central Time; 3rd congressional district.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Greenville (county seat) | City | 28,147 |
| Commerce | City | 9,086 |
| Royse City (part) | City | 2,112 |
| West Tawakoni | City | 1,895 |
| Caddo Mills | City | 1,498 |
| Quinlan | City | 1,398 |
| Wolfe City | City | 1,395 |
| Poetry (part) | Town | 973 |
| Celeste | City | 807 |
| Lone Oak | City | 644 |
| Campbell | City | 542 |
| Hawk Cove | City | 449 |
| Union Valley | City | 373 |
| Neylandville | Town | 67 |
Royse City is mostly in Rockwall County and Poetry is partly in Kaufman County; the counts above are the Hunt County parts only. Caddo Mills has grown fastest since 2020 — its 2024 estimate is more than three times its census count.
Roads
- Interstate 30 – runs southwest to northeast through Royse City, Caddo Mills and Greenville, then on toward Sulphur Springs. It is the county's link to Dallas.
- U.S. 69 – crosses I-30 at Greenville, north through Celeste toward Bells and Denison, south toward Lone Oak and Mineola.
- U.S. 380 – the east–west route across the west of the county, from Farmersville toward Greenville.
- U.S. 67 – signed with I-30 through the county.
- SH-34 – north–south through Greenville, up to Wolfe City and Honey Grove, down through Quinlan toward Kaufman.
- SH-11 and SH-24 – the Commerce roads, east to Sulphur Springs and north to Cooper.
- SH-66 and SH-50 – older parallel routes serving Royse City, Caddo Mills and the country between Greenville and Commerce.
Majors Field and Audie Murphy
The airfield south of Greenville opened in 1942 as an Army Air Forces pilot training base and was named for Truett Majors, a local flier killed early in the war. After 1945 it became an aircraft modification plant rather than an air base, and it has stayed one ever since, passing through a series of owners — Temco, LTV, E-Systems and Raytheon — to L3Harris today. The work is specialised conversion and electronic-systems fitting of large military aircraft, and it has been the county's largest industrial employer for decades.
Audie Murphy was born in 1925 to a sharecropping family in the countryside near Kingston, went to school at Celeste, and enlisted at 17. He came home with the Medal of Honor and more decorations than any other American soldier of the war, then spent two decades acting in Westerns. The Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum in Greenville covers both him and the crop that built the county.
Lake Tawakoni and Commerce
Iron Bridge Dam closed the Sabine River in 1960, and the reservoir behind it — Lake Tawakoni — spreads across the Hunt, Rains and Van Zandt county lines. It supplies water to Dallas. Lake Tawakoni State Park is on the Hunt County shore, and the small lake towns of West Tawakoni, Hawk Cove and Quinlan sit along the northern arm.
Commerce, in the northeast of the county, is a university town. Texas A&M University-Commerce began there in 1894 as a private normal college, became East Texas State and joined the A&M system in 1996; its enrolment is a large share of the town's daytime population.