Outdoor Living in Chico, TX

Homes and Yards in Chico

Settlement began in the mid-1870s, when J. T. Brown of Chico, California, opened a general store near Dry Creek. The Rock Island Railroad arrived a decade after the 1882 post office, and Chico became a retail center for cotton farmers.

In a small farm and oil town, a gable patio cover with sturdy posts and a roof matched to the house tends to sit comfortably on the lot.

Western Wise County is primarily hilly, with alluvial loam and sandy top layers over clay and limestone sublayers. The county averages twenty-nine inches of rain a year, and the growing season lasts 248 days.

Water comes from the City of Chico, which draws on groundwater.

Oil was discovered near Chico in the early 1940s, and the population reached 1,000 in 1942. Chico billed itself as the oil capital of Wise County, yet it was also a leading producer of crushed stone, and at one time the town had four large stone processing plants. In the 1950s peanuts and cantaloupes replaced cotton as the main crop.

Chico was incorporated in 1950, though its population fell to 850 by the middle of that decade. In 1986 the town had an estimated 890 residents, twenty-five businesses, and a weekly newspaper, the Chico Times. The population was 800 in 1990 and 947 in 2000.

NOAA’s Storm Events Database lists 115 hail reports in Wise County from 2016 to 2025, 94 of them an inch across or larger, with stones up to 4.5 inches. 4 of those reports were logged at Chico itself, the largest 2 inches. The same records show 58 damaging thunderstorm wind reports, with gusts up to about 85 mph, and 8 tornadoes. That is why a patio cover’s roof panels, fasteners and posts here are chosen for hail and wind, not only for shade.