CEDAR CREEK, TEXAS (Delta County). Cedar Creek was two miles southeast of Cooper, just south of the site of present City Lake, in southern Delta County. Settlement of the area began in the 1840s and 1850s. Early families included the Dawsons and Wrights, and residents established a settlement called Daisy Mission. The name was changed to Cedar Creek, named for the forests in the area and for a local creek. The settlers soon organized Cedar Creek School in a log house and by 1867 had established the Cedar Creek School District. In 1905 the school district enrolled forty-seven students and employed one teacher. Local residents organized the Cedar Creek Church in 1929; it met in the school, and T. M. McClain was the first pastor. The congregation sent a messenger to the Delta County Baptist Association meeting in 1931; however, the church was usually without a pastor. In 1949 Cooper Independent School District absorbed the local school, and the church closed soon after. The little community had disappeared from maps by 1964, and only Dawson Cemetery, near the old site, was identified on maps in 1984. The site of Cedar Creek was inundated with the completion of Cooper Lake in 1991. Dawson Cemetery was moved to a new site on Farm Road 1529. The old cemetery site was located within the boundaries of the Doctors Creek Unit of Cooper Lake State Park.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1951). Laurie E. Jasinski, "The Hunt, the Harvest, and the Hoedown: A History of Cooper Lake State Park" (unpublished report, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Cultural Resources Program, Austin, 2004). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).
