US 79 and SR 57 meet in Stephens.

Stephens was originally on a tract of land which was part of a land grant issued around 1846. At the beginning of the 1880's when grading of the road bed for the Cotton Belt railroad began; a saloon and boarding house were opened in town. These were soon followed by a mercantile and cotton business and other merchants. As the 1880's progressed, a dry goods store, a stave mill, a cotton gin, a bank and a newspaper opened and the first brick buildings in town were built. In the Spring of 1920, however, oil was discovered and there are still oil fields that are producing. However the school system is Stephens’s major employer.