COOKVILLE, TEXAS. Cookville is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 67 and the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, seven miles northeast of Mount Pleasant in eastern Titus County. In 1867 Andrew B. Cook opened a general store on the major road leading from Omaha to Mount Pleasant. The community was originally called Clay Hill when the post office was established in 1870, but in 1880 the name was changed to Cookville in honor of Cook. Cookville began to grow in the late 1870s, when it became a station on the narrow-gauge East Line and Red River Railroad. By 1884 the town had an estimated population of 500 and was a major shipping and supply center for farmers in eastern Titus and western Morris counties. During the 1890s the population of the town dropped from 600 to 250. During the early years of the twentieth century it began to grow again. By 1914 Cookville had a bank, a telephone company, several stores, and 800 residents. The economy was linked directly with the prosperity of the cotton farmers in the area. When the price of cotton plummeted in 1920, the bank and a number of other businesses were forced to close. By 1925 the population had fallen to 420. In 1990 Cookville had one business and a population of 105. The population remained unchanged in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Marion Ellis II, The Way It Was: A Personal Memoir of Family Life in East Texas (Waco: Texian Press, 1983 Traylor Russell, History of Titus County (2 vols., Waco: Morrison, 1965, 1966; rpt., n.p.: Walsworth, 1975).
