Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Cisco Cisco, TX

Cisco traces its origins to 1878 or 1879, when the Reverend C. G. Stevens arrived in the area, established a post office and a church, and called the frontier settlement Red Gap.

When the Houston and Texas Central Railway crossed the Texas and Pacific near Red Gap in 1881 — the only railroad intersection west of Fort Worth — residents moved the town to the crossing and renamed it for John A. Cisco, a New York financier who helped build the railroad.

Railroad immigrant brochures once promoted Cisco as the "Gate City of the West."

On April 28, 1893, a powerful tornado struck the center of Cisco's business district, killing 28 people and destroying or severely damaging nearly every building in town.

In 1919 Conrad Hilton came to Cisco hoping to buy a bank, but when the deal fell through he purchased the Mobley Hotel instead — the first hotel of the Hilton chain — and the building now serves as a museum and community center.

During the Eastland County oil boom of 1919–21, Cisco's population surged rapidly, with some estimates putting it as high as 15,000 people.

On December 23, 1927, Cisco was the site of the infamous Santa Claus Bank Robbery, in which Marshall Ratliff, dressed as Santa Claus, and his gang robbed the First National Bank.

Cisco is home to Cisco College, a two-year community college established in 1940 whose teams are the Wranglers and which also operates a campus in Abilene.

Lake Cisco, formed by the Williamson Dam built north of town in the 1920s, supplies the city's water and recreation.

As of the 2020 census, Cisco had a population of 3,883, nearly unchanged from 3,899 in 2010.