SALEM, TEXAS (Cherokee County). Salem was on Farm Road 241 three miles south of Rusk in south central Cherokee County. The area was first settled before the Civil War. Community life centered around the village church. A local school was in operation by 1897, when it had an enrollment of thirty-one. In the mid-1930s the settlement comprised the church, a cemetery, a school, and a few scattered houses. After World War II most of the residents left the area, but in the early 1990s a few houses and a cemetery were still at the site. Joseph T. Cook, who established Cook's Fort, is buried in the cemetery. In 2000 the population was twenty.
