 it possible to use available resources more efficiently. After World War II the percentage of residents who finished school gradually rose. By 1960 nearly 18 percent were high school graduates, and by 1980 the number represented 72 percent of the population over twenty-five.
In the early years of Coryell County few communities had their own preacher; itinerant ministers went from place to place, sometimes staying two or three months in a town. Among the earliest churches established in the county were a Baptist church at Coryell Church in 1854 and a Methodist church at Gatesville in 1854. The first Presbyterian church was organized at Rainey's Creek in 1858. A Christian church was in operation by the mid-1860s, and Germans and Wends brought the Lutheran church to the area, establishing St. John's in Coryell City in 1889. Coryell County had no Catholic church until 1940, when an influx of military families diversified the area's religion; before that, Catholics had to travel to Lampasas or Waco in order to attend services. In the early 1990s, the county had approximately 100 churches, representing fifteen different faiths; Southern Baptist, United Methodist, and Church of Christ were the largest communions.
Like most areas in the South, Coryell County suffered a severe economic decline after the Civil War and throughout Reconstruction. Between 1864 and 1866 the county lost 63 percent of its tax base. About a third of the lost property was in slaves; the rest came from declines in farm acreage, farm value, and livestock value, each of which had fallen 30 to 50 percent by the time of the 1870 census. Recovery was slow because transportation was poor and the economy was so dependent on stock raising and farming.
The county economy began to recover in the late 1860s. The overall population more than doubled between 1870 and 1880, rising from 4,124 to 10,924, and the market for agricultural products increased. The 1880 census reported 1,546 farms in the county, up from 279 ten years earlier, and the amount of improved land rose from 11,831 acres in 1870 to 83,258 acres in 1880. Field crops such as corn, wheat, oats, and cotton took up about 65 percent of the improved land, while livestock dominated the rest. By 1880 the county had nearly 23,000 cattle, 10,300 hogs, and 4,300 sheep. A branch of the Chisholm Trail passed through the county, and the area around Copperas Cove served as a camping ground for traildrivers. When the arrival of the railroad made long trail drives unnecessary, Copperas Cove continued to prosper as a shipping point for cattle. Coryell County ranchers reported more than 46,000 cattle and 19,800 hogs in 1890, but by 1900, due to the influx of new residents from the Old South, farming had become the dominant occupation; cotton, corn, and oats were raised on more than 65 percent of the county's 200,000 improved acres.
Two railroads were completed through Coryell County in 1882: the Texas and St. Louis Railway laid a narrow-gauge track from Waco to Gatesville, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe crossed the southern tip of the county near Copperas Cove, making its way from Belton to Lampasas. The arrival of the railroads prompted the establishment of Oglesby, Lime City, and Leon Junction, and provided new economic opportunities for Mound, Gatesville, and Copperas Cove. A third railroad company, the Stephenville North and South Texas, laid track from Hamilton to Gatesville in 1911, providing the northwestern part of the county with easier access to rail service and making the communities of Ireland and Levita more important commercial centers.
Between 1880 and 1900 the population of Coryell County nearly doubled again, rising to 21,308 by the turn of the century. Most of the incoming residents were from other parts of Texas or from other southern states; some, however, came from other countries. New immigrants arrived from Germany in the 1880s and 1890s via Galveston, Lee, and Fayette counties, and from Mexico soon after the turn of the century. In 1930, 145 residents of Coryell County were native Germans, and 352 were native Mexicans. As for African Americans, some former slaves left the county after the Civil War, but most stayed either to continue working for their former owners or to start new lives on their own. One group settled in Lincolnville, about four miles west of Gatesville. Between 1880 and 1950, the number of Black residents in the county increased at roughly the same rate as the White population; Blacks represented from 2 to 3 percent of the county's total population during those years. The permanent establishment of Fort Hood in 1950 changed the ethnic makeup of the county. By the early 1980s, 22 percent of the county's 56,767 residents were of British descent, 21 percent were German, 19 percent were Black, 8 percent were Hispanic, 2 percent were Asian, and 0.6 percent were Indian; the remaining percentage was unspecified.
For the first third of the twentieth century, roughly 30 to 50 percent of the county's improved acreage was devoted to cotton culture, with production generally ranging from 18,000 to 30,000 bales annually; the county's record crop of nearly 58,000 bales occurred in 1906. Production totals fell in the 1930s, as low yields and the onset of the Great Depression persuaded farmers to devote more of their resources to feed crops and livestock. In 1940 farmers planted 50,500 acres in cotton, compared to the 109,000 acres they had planted ten years earlier; in the late 1950s, cotton was grown on fewer than 17,000 acres. No cotton production was reported in the early 1980s.
Farmers and ranchers kept more of their land as pasture for livestock. Sheep and goat ranching, which had been first introduced to the area in the 1850s and 1860s, gradually increased in importance in the 1930s. Production of wool rose from 32,800 pounds in 1920 to 665,700 in 1940, while mohair production increased from about 16,000 to 121,300 pounds; these two industries declined somewhat in the 1960s and 1970s as cattle production increased. The cattle industry remained fairly stable between 1900 and 1940, with the amount of stock on hand averaging about 35,000 head. The number of cattle rose to nearly 48,000 in the late 1960s and to 93,000 in the early 1980s.
Tenant farming and sharecropping, which had accounted for the operation of a third of the county's farms in 1880, increased steadily in the early twentieth century, peaking at 58 percent in 1930. The depression forced some people, many of them tenants, to give up farming and look for work elsewhere. The establishment of Camp Hood in the early 1940s took approximately 225 square miles of land in southern Coryell County, eliminating two dozen communities and nearly 1,200 farms. Although some small farmers in other areas of the county managed to keep their land, the trend was toward larger farming and ranching operations; the number of farms in the county fell from 3,101 in 1930 to 1,841 in 1950 and 991 in 1982, while the average size of a farm rose from 188 acres in 1930 to 268 acres in 1950, and to 627 acres in the early 1980s. In 1950, 28 percent of the farms were run by tenants, and by 1982 that figure had fallen to 12 percent.
By virtue of its rural environment and relatively small population Coryell County escaped many of the hardships suffered by more urban areas during the depression of the 1930s; nevertheless, relief programs were necessary to see local residents through the difficulties that they did experience. Among these programs were two camps established by the Civilian Conservation Corps-one at Mother Neff State Park to construct park buildings and tourist facilities, and one at Gatesville as a soil-conservation and brush-control detail.
The United States involvement in World War II brought an end to the depression; on a local level, new war industries paved the way for a dramatic increase in the population of Coryell County. Among the military facilities built in and near the county in the 1940s were Camp Hood, the Bluebonnet Ordnance plant, and a camp for German prisoners of war. Because of the large number of soldiers, construction workers, and other government employees who came to the area during the war years, there was a severe housing shortage, and many local families offered rooms for rent in their homes. When the military decided in 1950 to make Fort Hood a permanent base, the population of Copperas Cove mushroomed, from 1,052 in 1950 to 4,567 in 1960 and to 10,818 in 1970. During the same period Gatesville's population grew by only 800, from 3,838 to 4,683.
The St. Louis Southwestern of Texas abandoned its track to Gatesville in 1972, leaving the town without rail service; the branch to the northwest had been discontinued in the 1940s. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, Gatesville was chosen as the site for several new units of the Texas Department of Corrections (seePRISON SYSTEM). The Gatesville State School for Boys, established in 1887, closed in the early 1970s, and the facility became the Gatesville Unit of TDC. Mountain View School for Boys, established in 1962, was also transferred to TDC in 1975 to provide relief for overcrowded conditions at the Goree Unit Women's Prison in Huntsville. The Hilltop Unit, a minimum-security prison for men, opened in 1981. In all, more than 1,000 people worked for the prison system at Gatesville, making TDC one of the county's largest employers.
In the early 1980s, 88 percent of the land in Coryell County (exclusive of Fort Hood) was devoted to farms