Tolar, TX

Tolar is a Hood County city seven miles southwest of Granbury, with U.S. 377 carrying the road between the two. The 2020 census counted 941 residents. The town began around 1890 when the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway reached the area, and a post office followed that same year. W. L. McGaughey named it for his friend Alf Tolar, giving this rail town a personal name.

By the 1920s, Tolar had a high school, bank, weekly newspaper, and a row of businesses serving farmers and ranchers. Petrified wood found nearby became a local industry for a time, and some older buildings still carry that unusual material in their walls. Tolar ISD keeps the school connection current. The town’s identity is tied to the stretch between Granbury and the open Hood County countryside: a small place that started with a rail line, built a trading center around it, and kept its own school district. The result feels more like a working crossroads than a suburb with a town name.