The settlement was first called Bethel, when in 1837 the one-room Bethel school was established a mile from Fort Lyday. This nearby fort was named for Isaac Lyday, one of the first settlers in the area and the recipient of an original land grant from the Republic of Texas. The Dial Presbyterian Church (originally the Bethel Society) was founded in the mid-1840s and met in the log-cabin building of
the Bethel school. The community was later called Lane, after Robert W. Lane, a teacher from Tennessee who founded Lane's Academy, the second school in the area. The Central National Road of the Republic of Texas passed through the settlement. When the post office opened in May 1880, the community was named Dial after another prominent citizen, James Dial. By 1890 the town had an estimated population of seventy-five. From 1903 to 1905 Sam Rayburn, the future speaker of the United States House of Representatives, taught in the Dial public school system. The community's post office closed in 1905. From 1900 through 1990 Dial's reported population never exceeded 100. In the 1930s it fell to twenty-nine but from the mid-1970s through 2000 was reported at seventy-six. In 1837 Fort Lyday was built about a mile southeast of present-day Dial to protect about 25 to 30 families living in the area. The settlers built a one-room school made of logs in 1840 and named it Bethel. In 1846 the Bethel Presbyterian Church was organized here makeing it the oldest church in Fannin County. In 1880 a site for a new school was selected where the present Dial community center now stands. The name of the school was changed to Lane's Academy after its founder, Robert W. Lane, a Tennessee scholar. On May 24, 1880 a post office was established in the Joe Wise home and was given the name Dial after the Dial family who had owned the cotton gin and grist mill. It was sometime in the 1890's before the name of Lane's Academy was changed to Dial School which operated until 1948 when it closed. Congressman Sam Rayburn taught in the Dial School from 1903 to 1905. The Dial cemetery is located south of the Presbyterian Church originally built in 1900 and rebuilt in 1925. The Baptist Church was originally built in 1909 and a new structure was built in 1965.
