Pioneers reached this area as early as the 1860s, and during the Civil War they built the temporary fortress settlement of Mugginsville on Deep Creek. A branch of the Western Cattle Trail once passed nearby, and population increased after the Texas Central Railroad arrived in 1881. Moran began when Swope Hull opened a grocery store at the rail crossing on Deep Creek in 1883 and served as postmaster of the first post office, called Hulltown, which opened on August 29, 1883. In March 1884 Hull bought 160 acres between Post Oak and Deep Creeks and laid out a townsite. Most of the property was bought by I.B. (Bem) Scott, who sold his interests in 1890 to M.D. Bray (1845-1926), a prominent local merchant and landowner. The town's name changed from Hulltown to Hicks in 1890 and to Moran in 1892 for Texas Central Railroad president John J. Moran. By the 1890s the community had a school, Baptist, Church of Christ, Cumberland Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations, a newspaper began in 1895, and a bank opened in 1902. Incorporated in 1919, Moran became a shipping point for drilling supplies during the oil and gas boom of 1910-30, and today the area's economy is based on farming, ranching, and oil and gas production.