The History of Rockwall, Texas

The Boydstun family of Illinois were the first Anglo-American settlers here in the late 1840s, taking up land near the East Fork of the Trinity River when the area was still part of Kaufman County. Around 1852, well-diggers struck the formation that would name the place: a straight rock 'wall' running underground, surfacing here and there, so regular-looking that folk tales insisted prehistoric people had built it. Scientists have since ruled it a natural geological feature, but the mystery gave the town its identity. When the community was established on April 17, 1854, on land donated by Elijah Elgin, they named it Rockwall for the formation.

Rockwall started as part of Kaufman County, but in 1873 residents carved out their own county — Rockwall County, with the town of Rockwall as its seat. It remains the smallest county in Texas by area, a distinction the town has worn with a kind of pride ever since. For most of its first century Rockwall was a small farm-trade county seat, its courthouse square anchoring a rural community east of Dallas, well outside the city's orbit.

The reservoir made modern Rockwall. When Lake Ray Hubbard filled in on the East Fork, the county seat suddenly had waterfront, and as Dallas sprawled east across the lake, Rockwall became a fast-growing lakeside suburb. The Harbor district brought shops and restaurants to the water's edge, and subdivisions climbed the low hills above the lake. The tiny county that started with a buried wall became one of the more affluent and fastest-growing corners of the metro — still the smallest county in Texas, just a lot more crowded.