HOOD COUNTY, Texas — Texas may have a new town on the books after Tuesday’s elections, and residents there say the reason for it is a noisy neighbor they feel they’ve run out of options with.
People living in rural Hood County — southwest of Fort Worth and just outside of Granbury — will vote on whether to incorporate as an official township called Mitchell Bend, named for the two-lane highway that runs through the community. Folks there say it would only cover about two square miles and would only be made up of a few hundred residents.
But leaders behind the push say this isn’t about creating a thriving new community or building a new local government, it’s about a neighbor that moved into the community about two years ago. That neighbor is a cryptocurrency mining facility that sits along the main highway.
Cheryl Shadden and her dog stand in their backyard, with the MARA Holdings cryptocurrency mining facility humming in the distance. (Spectrum News 1/Brian Scott)
“I moved out here for peace and quiet and to have horses and dogs and to live a quiet life,” said Cheryl Shadden.
You can see that facility from Shadden’s backyard, and more importantly, she says you can hear it. She said the equipment at the large property lets off an almost constant humming noise that varies in intensity.
Up the road a bit farther, Shadden’s neighbor, Danny Lakey, regularly takes readings with a decibel meter he ordered.
“Running 75 to 76 [decibels] this morning,” said Lakey as he took another reading in the high 60 decibels range.
A study on record with Hood County found sound in the neighborhoods near the facility ranges from about 35 decibels to 53 decibels. Whether by Lakey’s readings or the study’s, the facility is within state ordinance which allows a limit of 85 decibels.
Lakey and Shadden said they believe that’s likely the case, but that it’s not a matter of just the volume of the sound — it’s that it’s constant.
“It doesn’t just stop at your walls,” said Shadden. “It comes through your walls and windows. You hear it 24/7.”
“This is not reasonable,” said Lakey as he listened to the hum from his backyard, where he says his firepit and outdoor amenities sit unused these days.
The neighbors said, for the past two years, they’ve tried to work with facility leaders, go to local and county governments for help and get state leaders in Austin to step in. But the facility continues to hum. So now they say they’re turning to the incorporation effort to try to take matters into their own hands.
“We’re at the point of incorporation,” said Shadden.
The neighbors say that by becoming an official township with their own local government, they can then attempt to set local noise and environmental ordinances to get the situation under control.
The group petitioned and eventually got the item added to the November ballot for residents in the area to decide.
A sign posted in the Mitchell Bend area, encouraging residents to vote against incorporation. (Spectrum News 1/Brian Scott)
While “Incorporate Mitchell Bend” signs sit in front of many homes in the area, you’ll also find signs encouraging residents to vote no on the measure. Some say they’re concerned about a lot of the things that come with incorporation like more taxes, government oversite and local ordinances — things several folks said they moved to the unincorporated county to avoid.
Additionally, and regardless of the results of the election, leaders at the mining facility are speaking out and striking back against the effort.
A spokesperson for MARA Holdings, the company running the Hood County facility, said they just filed a lawsuit against the county, questioning the legality of the ballot measure and how it came together.
In a statement to Spectrum News, a MARA spokesperson said:
“We filed this challenge because we had no choice. The current incorporation effort serves no lawful or legitimate purpose and is legally invalid. It seeks only to target specific businesses —including MARA — with punitive taxes and restrictive ordinances, which is contrary to the principles of fair and lawful governance.
“We believe municipal incorporation should serve the genuine needs of communities, not be used to target or weaponize the process against law-abiding businesses.
“MARA is deeply committed to creating jobs, supporting local communities, and being good neighbors. We have invested millions of dollars to enhance the Granbury site since acquiring it in 2024, including transitioning the vast majority of the site to immersion cooling, and completing construction of a sound wall around the facility. Moreover, independent sound studies, including one by the Hood County government, have confirmed that we continue to operate well below state and county legal sound limits, despite repeated false assertions.”
The MARA Holdings cryptocurrency mining facility as seen from the backyard of Mitchell Bend neighbors. (Spectrum News 1/Brian Scott)
Shadden and Lakey acknowledged the efforts by the company to cut back on the sound, but they said, despite those efforts, the sound still remains a constant in their neighborhood.
The duo also said that they understand the neighbors who have concerns about incorporation.
“We did not want to be in a city, we did not want all the regulations,” said Lakey.
However, Lakey said there are no intentions to create more barriers for the neighbors, they just want to get some rules on the books to protect against that noise.
“The state of Texas can’t protect us, the county can’t protect us, and so the only, we have gone through all the means we could,” said Lakey.
“There are people here who are impacted by this. They want to sleep in their beds in peace at night,” said Shadden.