Gallatin

Gallatin is an incorporated farming community at the junction of Farm roads 22 and 768, six miles north of Rusk in central Cherokee County. The area was first settled in the late 1840s, but a community did not develop until 1902, when the Texas and New Orleans Railroad was built through the area. John W. Chandler and his sister, Sophronia, who owned the surrounding land, asked Rusk attorney C. H. Martin to survey a townsite. Chandler named the new town Gallatin, after his hometown of Gallatin, Tennessee. The new community, located in a large truck-farming area, quickly developed into a market for tomatoes and other produce. The construction in 1907 of a branch line of the T&NO between Gallatin and Rusk further enhanced the town as a shipping center. By 1914 Gallatin had a population of 350, several churches, two general stores, a drugstore, a school, and a cotton gin. In 1916 virtually the entire business district was destroyed by fire, but the town was quickly rebuilt, and as late as the mid-1930s it reported 500 residents and five businesses. After World War II the community steadily declined. Its school was consolidated with the Rusk schools in the 1950s, and many of the town's businesses closed. The population of Gallatin fell to 350 by the early 1950s, and in 1990 only 171 residents and two stores were reported there. Nevertheless, Gallatin was incorporated in the early 1980s. As of 1991 it had an estimated population of 382 and three businesses. In 2000 the population was 378 with four businesses.