Welcome to Van Zandt County

  • Van Zandt County Courthous

Welcome !

We are the gateway to East Texas being located between Tyler and Dallas. Our county is home to just over 56,000 residents and covers 860 square miles of gently rolling land that includes prairie soils on the West to pine forests on the East side.

Agriculture is the number one industry in the county with an estimated agricultural income of over $178,816,200 in 2019. The top five commodities in order are: nursery/greenhouse, forage, beef, dairy and vegetable production.

Our mission: The Van Zandt County Extension Office is your link to the land-grant university – Texas A&M. It is the source for current, unbiased information available on subjects that matter to you. Texas AgriLife Extension Service offers practical, how-to education based on university research. It’s available to any resident of Texas. You may read it in the newspaper, hear it on the radio, attend an Extension workshop, order a publication or just call your county Extension office!

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service is a part of the largest informal education system in the world. Created by Congress in 1914, it is a unique three-way partnership of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, The Texas A&M University System and Texas county governments. We also work in partnership with other public and private universities, agencies, foundations, organizations, cities, businesses and industry to enhance the education we offer.

Extension education covers a wide range of subjects: from youth development through the 4-H program, to raising cattle or landscaping your yard, from enhancing tourism as an industry to preparing healthy meals for your family. Extension provides current and cutting-edge research based information.

We are most proud of our youth development program. 4-H is alive and thriving here. Young people are involved in a wide variety of project work that covers traditional programs like livestock projects, clothing and textiles, food and nutrition to new space age projects like aerospace, rocketry, and computer science.