Italy, TX

Italy is a town in Ellis County at the junction of U.S. 77 and State Highway 34, just off I-35E, with 1,926 residents in the 2020 census. Waxahachie is about 15 miles north and Hillsboro about 20 miles south. The town was founded in 1879 in a cotton, corn, sweet-potato, and wheat-growing area, then became a market center when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad arrived in 1890. The name came from a settler who had visited the European country. Main Street carries the town's civic pieces: City Hall, the S.M. Dunlap Library, and nearby community services. Upchurch Ball Fields and George E.

Scott Memorial Park give Italy its two named recreation sites, and Italy Independent School District keeps school life close to the town center. Italy also has a distinctive civil-rights history. In 1953, Black residents organized a separate Colored City Hall on Williams Street after pressing for water, sewer, street, and lighting improvements. A Texas Historical Commission marker was granted in 2018, and local preservationists have worked toward restoring the building as a museum. Italy is a small highway-and-rail town where farming, school, and a segregated civic past remain visible in the same few blocks.