The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 349
663 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Population Trends in the Western Cross Timbers
and dairy products were still in demand and continued to be
leading heartland exports, but danger signals had appeared in the
form of unstable and fluctuating market prices for cotton and
livestock. The decline of cotton acreage could not be reconciled
with the continued arrival of migrants and by wartime birth
rates. In 1910 o both Comanche and Palo Pinto counties had urban
areas, but the population increase had been so great during the
previous decade that the rural population of those two counties
showed no decrease as a result of the deduction of the urban in-
habitants from the number of rural inhabitants (Table 6). In
1920o Wise County had the largest rural population in the heart-
land, but it was one of the three counties which still did not have
urban centers. Of particular interest is the city of Eastland which
got a booming start when classified as an urban area for the first
time in 1920o. Because of the population revolution of 1917, the
town had 39,203 residents while the county still had 19,302 rural
inhabitants.
As the rate of total population decline gained momentum, it
sometimes undermined the currents of urban growth within the
heartland counties. A good example is to be found in the case of
Comanche County in the decade preceding the 1930 census. The
increase of urban population had proceeded at a moderate rate
during the first decade of the twentieth century, but the trend
turned sharply upward during World War I and extended into
the g92o's (Figure 5). But during that decade a decline in urban
as well as rural population took place as the urban migration was
caught up in the throes of total population decline. Comanche
County, which had an urban classification for the first time in
1910o, found that in 1930 it no longer had the requisite 2,500
inhabitants living in the town of Comanche. Therefore, in the
1930 census figures all persons residing in Comanche County
were classified as rural. It is here that the full weight of the trend
of total population decline is most evident, for Comanche Coun-
ty's rural population also suffered a decline of 500 inhabitants.
Neither the blinding dust storms nor the economic woes of the
great depression delivered the heartland from the grips of total
population decline. The rural population decline during the
decade of the 1930's was not as sharp as it had been since345
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962, periodical, 1962; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101195/m1/395/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.