Tioga, TX

Tioga is a Grayson County town of 1,142 residents in the 2020 census, about 20 miles southwest of Sherman along U.S. 377. The town began when the Texas and Pacific Railway reached the site in 1881, and the railroad still shows in the older shape of the place: a small commercial center, a school, and a highway corridor spread across open North Texas ground. Its name came from a New York Indigenous word reported to mean swift current or rushing waters. Water is the unusual thread in Tioga's story. A local well became the basis of a late-1800s mineral-water business, with bottling, bathhouses, and health seekers arriving for treatments; the town grew to roughly 1,200 people by 1902.

Lake Ray Roberts later brought a different kind of water-centered activity to the area, including fishing and hunting, and the Tioga school system has had a four-year high school since 2015-16. The useful local shorthand is a town built in layers: railroad stop first, mineral-water boomtown next, and a current North Texas community oriented toward the lake, Sherman, and Pilot Point.