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Willis, Texas
Summary
Willis is a city in Montgomery County, Texas, United States, located eight miles north of Conroe in north central Montgomery County. The city began to develop in 1870 after what is now the Union Pacific Railroad built track through the area. As a part of the Piney Woods, the Willis economy has historically been driven by lumber, agriculture, and the manufacture of lumber and agriculture equipment. From the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, it produced tobacco as a commodity crop. Competition from Cuba reduced its contribution to the economy.
As of 2020, the population of Willis was estimated to be 6,431. In 2008, after Willis's population passed 5,000, the city established a home rule city charter.
Willis is located at (30.422640, –95.478829).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.
Before the founding of Willis, most residents in the area lived in a settlement known as Danville, formed in the 1830s four miles west of present-day New Waverly. A few Danville residents in the 1850s settled to the south, founding the new community of what is now Willis.
Several of these early Danville residents were large planters, who held numerous enslaved African Americans to work the labor-intensive tobacco crops on their plantations. In the 1850s, enslaved African Americans outnumbered whites in Danville: there were 600 slaves and 400 whites. After the Civil War, many freedmen and their families moved away from the plantations to the Willis area. There in 1867 they established Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church, which is the oldest church in Willis.
In 1870, the Houston and Great Northern Railroad (now the Union Pacific Railroad) decided to build a railroad through Montgomery County. After residents of Danville refused to allow the railway through their town, Peter J. and Richard S. Willis donated a parcel of their landholdings in Montgomery County so the railroad and station stop could be built there. They founded the town of Willis in the process.
Official source
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