Navarro County Texas map
32.05° N · 96.48° W · County seat: Corsicana · 1,086 sq mi
Texas oil is usually dated from Spindletop in 1901, but the state's first commercial field was here: in 1894 a Corsicana crew drilling a municipal water well hit oil instead, and by 1898 the town had the first refinery in Texas. The county's other defining feature came much later — Richland Chambers Reservoir, one of the largest lakes in the state, which fills the southeastern quarter.
Centered on Corsicana. I-45 runs northwest to southeast through the city; the large body of water to the southeast is Richland Chambers Reservoir.
Where Navarro County is
The county lies on the Blackland Prairie between the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and Waco, roughly an hour from each on I-45 and I-35 respectively. Ellis County is north, Henderson County northeast, Freestone County southeast, Limestone County south and Hill County southwest.
Dallas is about 54 miles northwest in a straight line, Mesquite 50 miles north and Waco 52 miles southwest. The county is in the 6th congressional district and on Central Time.
Navarro County was created in 1846 out of Robertson County, in the first batch of counties organized after statehood, and named for José Antonio Navarro, the San Antonio Tejano who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. The original county was vast: land assigned to Navarro was later used to form counties as far west as Parker and Palo Pinto, more than a hundred miles away.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Corsicana (county seat) | City | 25,117 |
| Kerens | City | 1,518 |
| Rice | City | 1,199 |
| Blooming Grove | Town | 860 |
| Dawson | Town | 816 |
| Frost | City | 622 |
| Angus | City | 435 |
| Retreat | Town | 410 |
| Oak Valley | Town | 404 |
| Mildred | Town | 398 |
| Eureka | City | 313 |
| Richland | Town | 271 |
| Navarro | Town | 231 |
| Barry | City | 217 |
Roads
- I-45 – the Dallas–Houston interstate, in from Ennis at the north end of the county and out past Richland to the southeast; Corsicana's exits are the busiest stop on the northern half of that run.
- US-287 – meets I-45 at Corsicana and runs northwest through Waxahachie toward Fort Worth.
- SH-31 – east from Corsicana through Kerens toward Athens and Tyler, west toward Hillsboro and I-35.
- SH-22 – southwest from Corsicana through Blooming Grove and Dawson to Hillsboro.
- SH-14 – south toward Mexia and Groesbeck.
- SH-75 – the old highway running beside I-45 through the towns the interstate bypassed.
- SH-309 – a short north–south link through the eastern half of the county.
The Corsicana field
The city of Corsicana was drilling for water in 1894 when the crew struck oil at a shallow depth just south of the courthouse square. Nobody wanted it at first — the town needed water — but within a few years the Corsicana field was producing commercially, the first field in Texas to do so, and in 1897–98 a refinery was built to handle the crude. It was the beginning of what became the Magnolia Petroleum Company, and it drew the engineers and money that went to Spindletop three years later. The field is long past its peak but pumpjacks still work fields around the county, and Corsicana's oil history is the reason a town of 25,000 has a downtown built at the scale it is.
The city's other export is fruitcake: Collin Street Bakery has shipped them out of Corsicana since the 1890s, and the bakery is one of the county's larger employers. Navarro College, a two-year college with a campus on the north side of Corsicana, is another.
Richland Chambers Reservoir
Richland Chambers sits on Richland Creek and Chambers Creek where they join above the Trinity River, in the southeast corner of the county reaching into Freestone County. It was finished in the late 1980s for the Tarrant Regional Water District, which pipes the water more than a hundred miles northwest to Fort Worth. By surface area it ranks among the largest reservoirs inside Texas, and it accounts for nearly all of the county's 76 square miles of water. The shoreline is mostly private, with boat ramps and marinas reached from SH-31 near Kerens and from the farm roads south of Corsicana; the lake is known for white bass and catfish.