Richland, Texas

Richland is a town in Navarro County, Texas, United States. The population was 255 at the 2020 census.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.1 square miles (2.8 km2), all land.

History

Richland, at the junction of Interstate 45 and State Highway 14, on Pisgah Ridge twelve miles south of Corsicana in south central Navarro County, was first settled in the late 1840s. Asa Chambers had established a store on the trail from Corsicana to Franklin by 1848, when a post office, named Richland Crossing after nearby Richland Creek, opened in his store. The store, which moved and changed ownership several times, continued to form the nucleus of the community until the early 1870s. When the Houston and Texas Central Railway was built through the area in 1871, the station on the Pisgah Ridge near the store was designated Richland, and a new community began to develop around the depot. A post office named Richland began operating in 1878, and by the mid-1890s the town had two steam gristmills and cotton gins, three general stores, a grocer, two blacksmiths, two saloons, a hardware store, a bank, and an estimated population of 150. The first school had begun operating around the time of the Civil War, and by 1906 the town had a two-teacher school with an enrollment of seventy-five. Richland continued to prosper during the 1920s, reaching a peak population of 750 in 1929.