Van experienced an overnight oil boom, growing from a rural farming community with a school, and post office to an oil boomtown where thirty buildings, including hotels and stores, had been constructed in only ten days. In 1930 the Texas Short Line Railway was extended from Grand Saline. The population numbered 894 throughout the 1930s. The population declined to 620 during World War II, as workers moved away to jobs in war-related industry, but increased steadily thereafter. Businesses in the community fluctuated from a high of fifty in 1934 to a low of fifteen in 1945, but remained between thirty and forty throughout most of the town's history. Mechanization of the oilfield occurred in the 1940s, and by the 1950s Van had a Humble Oil refinery, five churches, and a consolidated independent school district. A total of 591 wells made up the Van field when Pure Oil became a division of Union Oil in 1965. The population of Van grew from 1,103 in 1962 to 1,820 by 1974. The population reached just over 2,600 residents in 2013.