24/7 Trauma & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Tom Bean Tom Bean, TX

Tom Bean is a small city in southeastern Grayson County, about 11 miles southeast of Sherman and 25 miles south of the Red River and the Oklahoma border.

Tom Bean was founded on October 27, 1888, on a new branch of the Cotton Belt Railway running between Commerce and Sherman.

The town is named for Thomas C. Bean, a wealthy and famously eccentric Bonham land surveyor who donated fifty acres for the townsite and railroad right-of-way to lure the rail line across his Grayson County land.

Bean died in 1887, the year before the town bearing his name was laid out, and more than 100 people later tried to claim his estate, which included some 25,000 acres in Grayson County alone.

Nearby Whitemound was bypassed by the railroad and lost its post office to Tom Bean in 1888, and most of its settlers moved to the new town and established homes and businesses there.

Tom Bean boomed in the early days of the 20th century, when it boasted a grain company, a furniture company, a drugstore, a saloon, a dance hall, a movie theater, and a newspaper called the Tom Bean Bulletin.

Tom Bean's city charter was signed in 1897, and the first mayor elected under the charter was Ice B. Reeves.

Tom Bean celebrated its centennial in 1987, a hundred years after the town was first informally established.

Tom Bean had 930 residents at the 2020 census, down from a peak of 1,045 in 2010, living in 373 households and 289 families.

Tom Bean is part of the Sherman-Denison metropolitan area, and its recent growth is driven by its proximity to Sherman, about 11 miles to the northwest.