BLUEWATER, TEXAS. Bluewater is on an unnumbered road south of Farm Road 943 in southwestern Polk County, sixty-five miles north of Houston. The community was presumably named after Blue Branch Creek, which runs through the area. The settlement was started in the late 1890s by settlers including Daniel Rick Bush, Jim Geldard, and E. Dowden. Early residents built a log church and established the Blue Branch school, a cotton gin, a sawmill, and a blacksmith shop. The post office, called Dowden after its first postmaster, was open from 1904 to 1915. A few scattered buildings and residences, including a church and a cemetery, remained in the area in the late 1980s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Pictorial History of Polk County, Texas, 1846–1910 (Livingston, Texas: Polk County Bicentennial Commission, 1976; rev. ed. 1978).
