In the early 1900s, plans called for the Bartlett and Western Railway to run from Bartlett to Florence as a feeder to the MK&T (Katy) Railroad, and Temple real estate developer Orlando D. Jarrell persuaded railroad executives to route it through leased property rather than through Corn Hill, two miles south. Partnering with E.C. Haeber of Bartlett, who provided capital to purchase the property, Jarrell platted a townsite and began selling lots in December 1909. By December 1911, when the railroad arrived, most Corn Hill residents had moved to the new town, and between 20 and 25 structures were also relocated there. In 1911, E.M. Wilson, a cotton buyer from Taylor, built a mercantile, bank, and hardware shop in downtown Jarrell. A post office opened on March 8, 1912, the first school was a frame structure, and a two-story brick school building followed in 1916. Three cotton gins processed the crop on which the town depended, but the decline of the cotton industry during the 1920s and 1930s, along with the closing of the Bartlett and Western Railway in 1935, caused a significant population decline from a peak of 500 in 1914 to 200 by 1930, before rising again to 350 by 1945. Jarrell made national headlines when a tornado on May 27, 1997, killed 27 residents and injured many others, and the town carried on, incorporated in 2001, and has since experienced rapid population growth.