Present-day Holland originated in three different settlements. Settlers first came to the area during the 1830s to farm its fertile soil. A community named Mountain Home, southeast of present-day Holland along Darrs Creek, included a school, church, businesses, and a cotton gin, and a post office opened there in 1870 with James Shaw as postmaster. In 1874, James R. “Rube” Holland, a Civil War veteran, came to Bell County from Arkansas, and in 1878 he built a steam-powered cotton gin on his property three miles southwest of Mountain Home. The next year, a post office named Holland opened in a store near the gin, with Alfred Evans, a former state representative and veteran of the Indian Wars and the U.S.-Mexico War, appointed postmaster. In 1881, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad passed through the area, and G.M. Dodge, a Civil War veteran and civil engineer, purchased land for a town site that became known as New Mountain Home. Businesses moved there from Old Mountain Home, and in 1882 the Holland post office moved there as well. By the mid-1880s the community had adopted the name Holland. The new town grew quickly as immigrants, primarily Czechs and Germans, arrived and helped the farming community become a leading producer of cotton. A rural telephone system began in 1902, electricity was connected in 1915, and by 1920 Holland had several churches, two banks, two hotels, noted schools, four cotton gins, an opera house, and a population of more than 1,000. A volunteer fire department officially organized in 1929, and Holland continues as an agricultural community rich in heritage and history.