Published: August 24, 2009 02:16 pm      

John Watson: Cresson — longhorns to natural gas

Cresson is located at the crossroads of U.S. 377 and Texas 171 on the Johnson-Hood County line. The business district is mainly in Hood County, and the residential area is in Johnson County.

The town nudges the Parker County line and very close to Tarrant County.

There are conflicting stories about the origin of Cresson.

One story from the Handbook of Texas Online states, “The town was named for John Cresson, captain of a wagon train that camped in the area before the Civil War. Cresson later built several houses and a general store on the site of the future town.”

An early newspaper clipping states, “Cresson, Texas, was established with the coming of the Frisco railroad in 1886. This railroad at that time was known as The Fort Worth & Rio Grande. One year later the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe was built through Cresson.

“The origin of the name of the town is speculative. Some of the old settlers think the town was named for an official of the Santa Fe Railroad; others say it was first named Crescent because it is on a high divide between Cleburne and Weatherford, and later the name was changed to Cresson by the Post Office Department at Washington to preserve its identity from another Crescent in Texas.”

From the earliest times the Texas longhorn roamed the open range around Cresson.

The coming of the railroad made it easier to ship the cattle to various markets.

Cresson is in the heart of the finest ranch country anywhere. The rich, gently rolling prairie land is perfect for ranching. From Godley to Weatherford and Benbrook to Granbury, Cresson remains today at the center of a large ranching area.

Hood County was formed from part of Johnson County in 1866, and Cresson was platted in the late 1880s.

Surveyor Madison Jones later deeded land for school purposes. The first school was a one room school house later torn down when a two-story frame building was erected in 1890.

This school was used until 1918, when it was replaced by a red brick building which burned in October 1930.

Students attended classes at local churches while a new schoolhouse was built. The yellow-brick, mission revival schoolhouse was completed in 1931 with an auditorium and four large classrooms.

After Cresson consolidated with Granbury Schools in 1967, the school building was abandoned. A community group organized in the late 1970s to work for its restoration. Today, the school serves as a community center and as a link to Cresson’s early educational programs.

For most of the 20th century, Cresson remained a small, quiet ranch community. In the mid 1990s Jack Farr got the idea for a sports car, country club community centered on a race track.

It took him a few months to locate some suitable land for the project. He finally settled on land on the southwest side of Cresson. Here he built what is known as a double loop track.

Most country club estates center on a golf course, but this one is built around a race track.

Several single family residences are built around the track with room for more. At this time this is the only facility of its kind in the country. It has brought a lot of national attention to Cresson.

Another nearby attraction is the Pate Museum of Transportation a few miles east of town.

A. M. Pate Jr., owner of Texas Refinery Company, began collecting classic cars in the 1960s and continued collecting until his death in 1988.

The exhibit contains more than three dozen classic and antique cars. There is no admission charge to go through the museum.

In the late ’90s drilling started in the Barnett Shale for natural gas. Several trucking companies have set up headquarters near Cresson. This has been a big boon to area businesses.

Just north of Cresson on Texas 171, Devon Energy is developing Cresson Crossroads.

This residential and industrial development will have Devon’s new regional headquarters building, which is expected to contain about 57,000 square feet and house nearly 250 employees on a daily basis.

Other natural gas related companies are finding Cresson Crossroads an attractive location because of its close proximity to Fort Worth, Granbury and Cleburne.

When Cresson Crossroads is completed, it will contain a retail shopping center, office buildings, an industrial area, and with multifamily and private residential areas. A large motel has already been completed on the west side of town.

As drilling progressed, the Fort Worth and Western Railroad, a division of Tarantula Corporation, saw a need for freight delivery to this area.

Santa Fe had a track from Cleburne to Cresson that hadn’t been used in several years so the FWWR leased the track from BNSF, set up a switching terminal at Cresson, and started delivering drilling supplies to the local drilling companies.

At this time Cresson is a booming little town.

I had heard several stories about ghosts being spotted around Cresson.

I recently went to Cresson to check on the ghost stories. It seems that no one in Cresson had heard of the ghost tales, but I did hear another good story.

It seems that sometime in 1977 an attorney’s wife from Fort Worth had been to their lodge on Lake Granbury.

On her way back to Fort Worth she tried to beat the train at the crossing in Cresson and lost.

The story goes that her ring finger was decapitated, and her five-carat diamond ring was missing. Supposedly the ring was never found.

Railroad officials still find people walking the tracks in the area of the crossing with their metal detectors looking for the ring, and they have to be told to leave the railroad property.



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.