Valley View, TX

Valley View is a Cooke County city on Spring Creek, where I-35, Farm Road 922, and the former Santa Fe Railway meet about ten miles south of Gainesville. The Lee family settled the site in 1870, L.W. Lee laid out the town in 1872, and the post office opened that same year. Cotton, livestock, wheat, gristmills, and gins followed, then the railroad in 1886. Valley View grew as a small market town before later highways changed how the surrounding county moved.

Schools remain one of the town's clearest through-lines: Valley View ISD dates to 1902 and now covers 89 square miles across southern Cooke County. I-35 runs just east of town, with exits serving the city and the surrounding rural area. Two fires in 1924 burned much of the square, and a May 2024 tornado brought a newer kind of storm memory to the Valley View area. The local picture is a small school-centered city on Spring Creek, with old cotton-and-rail history under the traffic of the interstate.