Rusk is the county seat of Cherokee County, in the Piney Woods of East Texas, about 130 miles southeast of Dallas and 160 miles north of Houston. The 2020 census counted 5,285 residents. The city sits in the rolling, forested terrain that defines deep East Texas, and it anchors a county of about 50,000 people named for the Cherokee people who lived in the region before their removal. The town was established by an act of the Texas legislature on April 11, 1846, which defined Cherokee County's boundaries and directed that the county seat be named for General Thomas Jefferson Rusk, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. From the start, Rusk was a government town, and its institutional role deepened in the late nineteenth century with the construction of the state penitentiary and, in 1893, the Texas State Railroad, built to serve it. The penitentiary was converted to the Rusk State Hospital in 1913 and remains a state health facility. The Texas State Railroad became the city's signature attraction. After regular service ended in 1921, the line was transferred to Texas Parks and Wildlife in 1972 and opened to the public in 1976; today it runs vintage steam and diesel excursions across the Piney Woods Route between Rusk and Palestine, a fifty-mile round trip. The Heritage Center of Cherokee County and the Cherokee Civic Theater anchor local culture, and the Birmingham Golf Club offers a nine-hole course in the rolling hills. For residents, Rusk provides a classic East Texas county-seat lifestyle. Rusk Independent School District serves the city and surrounding communities, and higher education is available through Jacksonville College fourteen miles northwest and Tyler Junior College's Rusk campus. The city's blend of government institutions, railroad heritage, and Piney Woods setting gives it a stable, distinctive character.