The History of Hooks, Texas

Hooks takes its name from the Hooks family, whose plantation anchored this corner of Bowie County in the mid-1800s. Warren Hooks became one of the largest farmers, planters, and landowners in northeastern Texas, developing his holdings and the surrounding country through the 1860s and 1870s. The town that grew up adjacent to his plantation carried the family name.

For its early decades, Hooks was rural farm country in the rolling land west of Texarkana — cotton, timber, and the slow rhythm of an agricultural settlement waiting on the railroad that would knit it into the wider world.

Rail service reached Hooks in 1876, and a post office opened in 1884 with James Smith as the first postmaster. With the rails came growth: by 1890 the town had three churches, a school, two sawmills, a hotel, and about 250 residents — a recognizable East Texas country town shipping cotton, lumber, and farm goods to market.

By 1914 Hooks had added a bank and a weekly newspaper, the Hooks Herald, and the population had climbed to around 400. Like many small farm towns, its fortunes rose and fell with cotton and the wider economy, and the numbers dipped through the 1920s and 1930s before a wholly new chapter arrived from an unexpected direction.

Everything changed on the eve of World War II. Just south of town, the U.S. Army built two huge installations — the Red River Army Depot and the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant — acquiring local farmland and bringing in thousands of workers. Population, which had fallen near 100 in the late 1930s, leapt past 2,300 by 1950 as families poured in for the jobs.

That federal payroll has anchored Hooks ever since. Red River Army Depot remains a major regional employer, overhauling and maintaining military vehicles and equipment. Today Hooks is a steady working town of roughly 2,500 people, proud of its Hooks ISD Hornets and best known nationally as the hometown of Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims.