QUICKSAND, TEXAS. Quicksand, also know as Quicksand Creek, is at the junction of State Highway 87 and Farm Road 1414, fifty-five miles northeast of Beaumont in central Newton County. Early settlers named the community after a nearby creek. Quicksand was thought to be the geographic center of the newly demarked Newton County and was made the first county seat. County officials held their first meetings at the home of Josephus S. Irvine,^qv an early Texas settler and veteran of the battle of San Jacinto.^qv Disputes concerning land titles and the realization that Quicksand did not lie at the county's geographic center led officials to make Burkeville the county seat in 1848. An 1849 election upheld the Burkeville move by an 86-82 vote. In 1853 a new town called Newton, four miles southwest of Quicksand, was established to house the county government. Quicksand had its own post office for about one month in the summer of 1871. It has remained a small community on the outskirts of Newton, where agriculture and timber are the greatest economic assets.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Archie P. McDonald, "`Westward I Go Free': Some Aspects of Early East Texas Settlement," East Texas Historical Journal 4 (October 1966). Newton County Historical Commission, Glimpses of Newton County History (Burnet, Texas: Nortex, 1982). Josephine Cochrum Peavy, A History of Newton County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1942).

Robert Wooster