CEE VEE, TEXAS. Cee Vee is on Farm Road 1440 twenty-three miles northwest of Paducah in northwest Cottle County. The settlement was founded on land which previously belonged to the CV Ranch. In 1927 Lafayette M. Hughes sold off property of the Mill Iron Ranch (see CONTINENTAL LAND AND CATTLE COMPANY), which included the CV land. A post office for the new settlement was granted in 1928 with William Newson as postmaster. Newson had requested the name of CV for the post office, and although postal officials forbade the use of initials, they accepted Cee Vee. A school, begun in 1928, functioned in the old Mill Iron Ranch headquarters until a new building was constructed in 1930. A gin was built around 1929, and Cee Vee grew to include a feed supply, a barbershop, and two general stores. Methodist, Baptist, and Church of Christ congregations had organized by 1929. Local businesses supplied a large isolated farming area. By 1940 Cee Vee had a population of fifty and two stores. The school continued to function through the late 1950s. The 1980 census reported a post office, one business, and a population of seventy-one in the community. In 1990 the population was still seventy-one, but in 2000 the population dropped to forty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carmen Taylor Bennett, Our Roots Grow Deep: A History of Cottle County (Floydada, Texas: Blanco Offset Printing, 1970).

Charles G. Davis