LITTLE CYPRESS, TEXAS. Little Cypress is located along State Highway 87 about four miles north of Orange in northeastern Orange County. The settlement was probably named for nearby Little Cypress Bayou and began sometime after the Civil War when the first school was built. The school and Little Cypress Baptist Church served as the centers of the community for area farmers into the twentieth century. In 1927 Little Cypress and Gum Grove schools consolidated, and eventually residents built a new four-room brick school that held both elementary and high school grades. Highway maps of the 1930s showed farms in the area. High school classes were discontinued from 1934 to 1951, but they were later restored to the community. By the late twentieth century, Little Cypress and Mauriceville were consolidated into a single school district. The first census figures for Little Cypress were available in 1990, when the town reported 1,050 residents. That figure remained constant in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Howard Williams, ed., Gateway to Texas: The History of Orange and Orange County (2nd ed., Orange: Heritage House Museum, 1988).
