Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Clyde, TX

Clyde's first settlers arrived around 1876, but the town took off after the Texas and Pacific Railway was built through northwestern Callahan County in 1880.

Local tradition says Clyde was named for Robert Clyde, a railroad construction crew foreman whose supply camp the workers visited so often - "Let's go up to Clyde's" - that the railroad adopted the name for its stop.

Clyde's post office opened in 1881, with Jesse L. Miller appointed its first postmaster on June 27 of that year.

The town sits on the Callahan Divide, the watershed ridge separating the Brazos and Colorado river basins, at roughly 2,000 feet above sea level, and it is built above an aquifer that long supported fruit and vegetable farming.

On June 10, 1938, a tornado ripped through Clyde, killing fourteen people, destroying twenty-one homes, and wrecking the town's school.

With 3,811 residents at the 2020 census, Clyde is the largest city in Callahan County, even though the county seat is Baird, six miles to the east; Clyde is part of the Abilene metropolitan area.

The 2020 census counted 1,485 households in Clyde, and about 72% of its occupied homes were owner-occupied.

Interstate 20 passes through the north side of Clyde, placing it about 14 miles east of downtown Abilene, and the transcontinental Bankhead Highway was routed through the town in 1924.

Clyde's population grew at every census of the twentieth century, from 495 people in 1910 to 3,345 in 2000.

Clyde students attend the Clyde Consolidated Independent School District, whose Clyde High School teams compete as the Bulldogs.