Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Bardwell, TX

Bardwell developed in the early 1880s around a cotton gin built by John W. Bardwell about a mile southwest of the present townsite.

The community built its first school in 1892, organized a Baptist church the following year, and opened a post office branch in 1893.

When the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway was routed through Ellis County in 1907, the gin — and the whole community — moved to the nearest stretch of track, and a townsite was surveyed.

Bardwell prospered as a cotton town in the 1920s, with three cotton gins, two banks, six grocery stores, four dry goods stores, a gristmill, a lumberyard, and its own weekly newspaper, the Herald.

Bardwell's population reached a high of 650 in 1929, when more than twenty-five businesses served the town.

By 1914 Bardwell had its own telephone system and electric power supplied by new lines from Ennis.

The Great Depression and drought drained Bardwell's economy in the 1930s, and most businesses closed or moved when the main road was rerouted to the new State Highway 34 in the early 1940s.

Bardwell sits on Farm Road 984 and State Highway 34 just west of Bardwell Lake, about ten miles southeast of Waxahachie, the Ellis County seat.

The 2020 census counted 625 people in Bardwell, packed onto just 0.3 square miles — a density of about 2,000 people per square mile.

Bardwell's own school was consolidated with the Ennis schools in 1958, and the town is served by the Ennis Independent School District today.