COOL
Out in the western stretches of Parker
County, just this side of the rock
cutout on U.S. Highway 180, the
city limit signs read “Cool,” and I
challenge anyone to come up with a
cooler name than that.
I don’t know if anyone has ever
put it to the scientific test, but it is
rumored that folks named the berg
Cool because it was always cooler
there (we’re talking temperature
here) than, say, in nearby spa-town
Mineral Wells or other area commu-
nities. It’s doubtful wagon loads of
people made anything like the Texas
to Colorado pilgrimage to escape the
heat, but Cool is on relatively high
ground and there’s not much there to
block the prevailing southerly breeze.
As one might imagine from its
name, Cool is a laid-back place, not
appearing on county maps until the
mid-1960s when it incorporated. By
’69, 506 people called Cool home.
The recorded number in 1970 was a
mere 21! Whether the census taker
was drunk or aliens beamed up
most of the population is unclear,
but by 1978 some 253 souls lived
in Cool. This pattern of a couple of
hundred residents, give or take 10
or 20, persisted through the 2000s.
The 2010 Census recorded a popula-
tion of 157. If the site Jim Wheat’s
Postmasters and Post Offices of
Texas, 1846-1930 is accurate, Cool
never had a post office of its own,
at least not during the period his list
covers.
Perhaps the coolest thing to come out
of Cool has been Casey James, the
ninth-season American Idol contend-
er. The guitar-picker’s bluesy rock
riffs and all-in bellow took him all the
way to a third-place finish in 2010.
BALCH/TIN TOP
A handful of miles south of
Weatherford, Balch was one of the
earliest communities in the county,
with a post office opening late 1858.
Settlers escaped to the area after
malaria broke out in nearby Tarrant,
Denton and Collin counties in the
early 1850s.
This settlement came on the cusp
of changing attitudes among the
nomadic Indians of the area. Prior
to the early 1850s, the Comanche
and Kiowa viewed the trickle of pale
faces into North Central Texas with
little more than curiosity. By the late
1850s, it had become clear to them
that the trickle was actually a flood
and the mix of the two cultures was
like oil and water — the invaders
wanted to own the land, to rip up the
earth with the plow. Consequently,
between 1858 and 1874, reservation
Indians slipping down out of Indian
Territory (now Oklahoma) raided,
plundered and sometimes killed
white settlers in the area. A second
group of Indians that had not surren-
dered to reservation life living among
the canyons of the Caprock Country
of the Panhandle also made forays
into this area.
But life went on in Balch, named
for T.E. Balch. The community’s
children attended Balch School, and
early settler Silas Smith served as the
first postmaster in ’58. Mr. Balch took
over the post in 1859. Smith returned
as postmaster during the Confederacy
years, beginning in ’62, when Balch
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Propane Sales & Service Since 1958
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