Building in Henderson County
Henderson County is in East Texas between the Neches and Trinity rivers, in a transition zone between East and Central Texas. Athens, the largest city and county seat, sits near the center about sixty miles southeast of Dallas. The county covers 949.7 square miles, and Cedar Creek Reservoir and Lake Palestine lie partly within it.
The county is hilly and rolling, from 256 to 763 feet above sea level. The eastern third has deep sandy loams and sands, a claypan belt has shallow sandy loams over dense clay, and Trinity bottomlands line the west. The subtropical climate brings about forty inches of rain a year and a growing season of 260 days, from March 11 to around November 26.
European settlers arrived only after the Texas Revolution in 1836, first along the Trinity River. The first community, Buffalo, grew at a Trinity ferry crossing. The legislature established the county on April 27, 1846, from parts of Nacogdoches and Houston counties and named it for James Pinckney Henderson, the first governor of the state. It was organized on August 4, 1846, and Buffalo served as seat until March 1848.
NOAA’s Storm Events Database lists 60 hail reports in Henderson County from 2016 to 2025, 48 of them an inch across or larger, with stones up to 2.75 inches. The same records show 28 damaging thunderstorm wind reports, with gusts up to about 75 mph, and 7 tornadoes. That is why a patio cover’s roof panels, fasteners and posts here are chosen for hail and wind, not only for shade.
