Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Emerald Lakes Willis, TX

Willis was founded in 1870, when Galveston merchants Peter J. and Richard S. Willis donated a townsite for the Houston and Great Northern Railroad — Montgomery County's first rail line — and the new town took their name.

Freed families settled the Willis area after the Civil War and founded Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church in 1867, which remains the oldest church in Willis.

In 1874 Willis launched a prolonged but unsuccessful fight to take the county seat from the town of Montgomery — a prize both communities eventually lost to Conroe.

By 1895 the Willis area was the leading tobacco-growing region in Texas, its tobacco winning prizes at world fairs in Chicago and Paris and supporting seven cigar factories at its peak.

Willis's tobacco boom collapsed in the early twentieth century after the tariff on Cuban tobacco was lifted, and the town's economy returned to the timber and agriculture of the surrounding Piney Woods.

Willis incorporated in 1937, and the extension of Interstate 45 through town in the early 1960s tied it into Houston's regional economy.

Willis sits eight miles north of Conroe on Interstate 45, between Lake Conroe and the Sam Houston National Forest.

The 2020 census counted 6,431 residents in Willis, up from 5,662 in 2010, and Census Bureau estimates put the population at about 7,652 by 2025.

Census Bureau surveys count about 2,359 households in Willis, with about 60.7 percent of homes owner-occupied.

More than 7,000 students — the Wildkats — attend Willis Independent School District schools, including Willis High School, in a district spanning parts of Montgomery and San Jacinto counties.