East Tawakoni Arrived After the Reservoir Did

East Tawakoni begins with a new shoreline. The state issued a reservoir permit in 1955. Land purchases began the next year, and Iron Bridge Dam went up between January 1958 and October 1960. During the 1960s, homes gathered beside the new Lake Tawakoni, nine miles west of Emory on State Highway 276.

The Sabine River Authority of Texas owns and runs the reservoir. The dam and spillway stretch about 5.5 miles. The lake has about 200 miles of shoreline in Rains, Hunt, and Van Zandt counties. Its water serves towns, industry, farms, and recreation.

The community's early population figures trace the change. East Tawakoni reported 278 residents in 1970 and 642 in 1990. Those numbers are not the point by themselves; they show settlement following the reservoir within a single generation.

That makes East Tawakoni different from Emory's courthouse square and the county's older farm communities. SH 276 is its spine, but the shoreline explains why the community is there. Western Rains County gained a town because a dam had redrawn the map.