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Smith County is located in northeastern Texas fifty-eight miles from the eastern state boundary. It is bordered by the Neches River and Henderson and Van Zandt counties on the west, Cherokee County on the south, Rusk and Upshur counties on the east, and the Sabine River and Upshur and Wood counties on the north. Tyler, the largest town and county seat, is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 69/271 with State highways 155, 110, 31, and 64, near the center of the county (at 32°20′ N, 95°15′ W). Interstate Highway 20 runs east and west through the northern part of the county. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway (or Cotton Belt), constructed in the 1870s as the Tyler Tap Railroad, crosses Smith County from east to northwest. The Missouri Pacific, constructed in the late 1870s as the International & Great Northern Railroad, crosses the southeast corner of the county. Lake Tyler and Lake Tyler East are major bodies of water in the southeast part of the county, and a third major reservoir, Lake Palestine, is located on the southwestern county line. The county comprises 932 square miles of the East Texas Timberlands region. Two-thirds of this environment is covered in post oak, blackjack oak, and tall grasses, and one-third is heavily forested with pine and hardwoods. The soil varies from sandy prairie loams in the northwest and east to loam-covered clay through the remainder of the county. The elevation ranges from 300 to 600 feet above mean sea level. Mineral resources include petroleum, gas, iron ore, clay, limestone, lignite, and salt. Only 1 to 10 percent of the county is prime farm land. The climate is warm and moist; the annual rainfall averages forty-four inches, and temperatures range from an average low of 33° F in January to an average high of 95° in July. The first freeze is usually late in November and the last early in March; the growing season thus lasts 259 days.
The first known inhabitants of the area were the Caddo Indians, an agricultural people with a highly developed culture. Their tribes, particularly the Anadarkos, occupied the area for centuries before Europeans arrived. The first European visitor was a Spanish missionary named José Francisco Calahorra y Saenz, who traveled through the area in 1765 and mentioned the Neches Saline, saline plains in what later became the southwestern corner of the county (see NECHES SALINE, TEXAS), in his account of the journey. No other European entered the vicinity until 1788, when Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Fragoso, two Frenchmen, passed through on a journey from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Natchitoches, Louisiana. Late in the eighteenth century, disease and threats from other Indians forced the Caddos to move. By 1820, however, the Cherokees, led by Chief Bowl, had settled at the Neches Saline after being driven from North Texas by hostile tribes. While these and other Indians occupied the area, the Mexican government issued grants for parcels of land now in Smith County. These included grants to David G. Burnet in 1826, Peter Ellis Bean in 1828, and Vicente Filisola in 1831. George W. Bays, who arrived on the Neches Saline in 1823, became the first non-Indian settler. Though he left after the Fredonian Rebellion and later returned only briefly, others were moving into the area. Still, unrest prevented the development of any sizable White settlement. In 1836 there were forty people, three trading posts, and a salt works on the Neches Saline, but after the fall of the Alamo the settlers retreated for a while to Lacy’s Fort, located nearby in what is now Cherokee County. Deteriorating relations with the Cherokees retarded settlement of the area until the Cherokee War of 1839 led to the removal of the tribe.
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