For its first half century Haslet stayed small. The Handbook of Texas records its population at 67 in 1903, 50 in 1915, and about 69 in the mid-1930s.
One teacher, twenty-one students
In 1896 the school had one teacher and 21 students. By 1906 enrollment had reached 25.
Main Street
By the 1920s Haslet had three grocery stores, a hardware store, a dry goods store, and a cotton gin serving the farms around it.
Decades later, a local writer looked back on those years. In a News-Tribune piece from July 30, 1976, now held by the Haslet Public Library, Mrs. H. W. Godbey remembered the town of 1936 as having two grocery stores, a notion store, two or three cafes, two filling stations, two cotton gins, three churches, a drug store, and a high school. By the time she wrote, the last gin had been sold.
The first tractor
On Avondale-Haslet Road, the Singleton family farmed land they had bought in 1912. In 1916 John Henry Singleton bought a new Rumely OilPull Type 30-60 tractor, believed to be the first tractor in northern Tarrant County. For more than twenty years it threshed grain and plowed nearly 200 acres a year, mostly cotton, with wheat and oats. Worn out by the late 1930s, it was cut up for scrap metal in 1942 for the war effort. One rear wheel was saved.
The story comes from Henry E. Singleton, John Henry’s oldest son, who told it to developer Danny Moss on a visit to the farm in 1999. Moss bought the farm from the family in 1998 and 2003 and developed it as Willow Springs Ranch and Willow Springs West. Singleton Drive there is named for the family.
The end of an era
Charles L. Maloney, whose ranch the railroad crossed, died in 1938 at age 96, having lived in the community since 1882.
