Denton

DENTON, TEXAS (Callahan County). Denton, also known as Denton Community and Denton Valley Community, is on State Highway 36 twelve miles southwest of Baird in western Callahan County. The site was on open range until the middle 1860s. Land in the area was largely owned by the railroad and the state. G. W. Denton, the early settler after whom the town was named, became the largest private owner of land in the area; he patented his acreage in 1854. Denton had a school district petitioned for by Worth Williams and six other men in April 1899. By 1916 the community had a post office, blacksmith shop, gristmill, and cotton gin. Like many other small communities in West Texas, Denton began to decline in the 1920s. In 1933 it reported a population of fifteen and one business and in the mid-1940s a population of twenty-five. By the 1970s two churches, a business, and a cemetery remained at the site. Denton was still listed as a community in 1990. In 2000 the population was six.