BOX CREEK, TEXAS. Box (Box's) Creek was an early settlement on Box Creek southeast of Rusk in east central Cherokee County. It was first settled around 1835 by Roland W. Box, who purchased a third of a league of land that had been granted to Stephan Burnham. Box built a small log fort on a bluff west of Box Creek about a half mile from the southeast corner of the Zaccheus Gibbs survey. Box's Fort, as the stockade was called, became the center of a settlement; Box's father, John M. Box, and his brothers–Samuel C., William, James, and John A.–built houses nearby. A local post office operated from 1851 to 1866, and the county's first Grange was organized at Box Creek in 1874. Over the years there were several churches and stores in the area, but a permanent settlement was never established, and by 1900 the community was no longer shown on maps. In the early 1990s only a few scattered houses remained in the area.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cherokee County History (Jacksonville, Texas: Cherokee County Historical Commission, 1986). Hattie Joplin Roach, A History of Cherokee County (Dallas: Southwest, 1934).
