In Houston County, Grapeland is located south of Palestine on US 287.
Since 1945 Grapeland has celebrated an annual Peanut Festival. A fiddler's contest that was part of the original "Goober Carnivals" has become the Labor Day Bluegrass Festival. Grapeland is known locally as the "queen city of the sand flats."
After 1936 oil and gas production became another important source of income for the town. Local manufactures now include a steel fabrication plant.
Growth in the 1970s and early 1980s resulted in a population increase of more than 35 percent; in 1990 the population stood at 1,450.