We Now Know Where the Fictional Town of Arlen, Texas is from ‘King of the Hill’
Someone with way too much time on their hands looked for every reference to Arlen, Texas from King of the Hill. We now know where the town would sit.
For years, we fell in love with the fictional town of Arlen, Texas. According to Wikipedia, Arlen is an amalgamation of numerous Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs including Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Allen. In addition to drawing inspiration from the Dallas region, Judge has described Arlen as "a town like Humble" (a suburb of Houston).
Even that link states they have no idea where the town is in our great state of Texas. I always thought it was a suburb of Dallas since Hank talks about hating to drive into Dallas.
Hank Hill Dallas
Sadly, it took an Okie to figure out where Arlen is and I know Hank Hill hates Okies as well.
Hank Hill on Oklahoma
A man by the name of G. Allen Finchum from the Oklahoma State Department of Geology officially crunched the numbers for us. In fact, the famous Wichita Falls episode helped out with determining the location of Arlen. In that episode on the way to the Dallas Cowboys training camp, Hank mentions that the trip to Wichita Falls is six hours away from Arlen.
Living in Wichita Falls and traveling to Dallas several times throughout the years. I could travel to Dallas and back to Wichita Falls in less than six hours. No way is Arlen in a suburb of Dallas. Finchum then used other Texas locations mentioned on the show to helped pinpoint Arlen. For instance, Hank's Dad Cotton lives three hours away in Houston.
Where is Arlen, Texas?
Killeen, Texas!
Yup, Finchum using all the references of travel from the show has the Hill's town as the Killeen area right in between Waco and Austin. All my life I thought Hank was living just outside of Dallas. He's way closer to Austin, but that's probably a good thing for him since he is a Longhorns fan as well.