DESERT CREEK. Desert Creek rises a mile northeast of Desert in southern Grayson County (at 33°27' N, 96°23' W) and runs south through Grayson and Collin counties for twelve miles, passing under State highways 121 and 78 and bending around Blue Ridge, to its mouth on Pilot Grove Creek (at 33°17' N, 96°24' W). Collin County historians attribute the name to a branch of the Caddo Indians who camped on the stream banks and named them Desert. The creek, intermittent in its upper reaches, runs through gently rolling terrain surfaced by clayey soils that support oak, juniper, grasses, and row or cover crops. Unlike other streams in southern Collin County, Desert Creek in the 1980s remained untouched by urban or industrial growth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roy Franklin Hall and Helen Gibbard Hall, Collin County: Pioneering in North Texas (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975).