Krum

Krum is on Farm Road 1173 seven miles northwest of Denton in west central Denton County. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway ran a line through western Denton County in the mid-1880s. At that time the company bought 200 acres, platted a townsite, and named the community for railroad official Charles K. Krum. The community reported a population of seventy-five in 1892, and by 1900 it was thriving, with a number of businesses, four churches, and a school. In 1900 the railroad shipped at least half a million bushels of wheat, prompting the claim that Krum was the "largest inland grain market in the world." In 1905 the Flour Mill and Elevator Company and three other elevator companies were operating at the community. The mill burned in 1915, and changing storage and marketing practices eventually closed the remaining elevators. Krum's growth and prosperity continued until about 1925, when its population reached 750. The community declined as cars and trucks began carrying trade to larger markets and as young people departed for college or city jobs. With the Great Depression years the town's population level dropped below 300, then stayed low in the post-World War II qv period, ranging between 300 and 400 until the 1970s, when the sprawl of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area northward brought suburban homeseekers in increasing numbers. Access from Krum to Interstate Highway 35 made commuting to city jobs convenient, and the community's population rose to 605 by 1978, to 917 by 1982, and to 1,542 by 1990. In 2000 the population was 1,979. That figure had increased to 4,157 in 2010.