Chico, TX

Chico is a Wise County town at State Highway 101 and Farm Road 1810, about five miles north of Bridgeport. Settlement began in the mid-1870s when J. T. Brown, who came from Chico, California, opened a store near Dry Creek. A post office followed in 1882, the Rock Island Railroad reached town a decade later, and Chico became a retail center for cotton farmers. Oil arrived nearby in the early 1940s, and the town also developed a crushed-stone industry with four large processing plants at one point. The local shorthand is Dry Creek, rail line, oil, stone, and a North Texas town that grew in layers.