CHEROKEE CREEK (LLANO COUNTY)

CHEROKEE CREEK (Llano County). Cherokee Creek rises 5½ miles west of Magill Mountain in northwestern Llano County (at 30°54' N, 98°52' W) and runs northeast for forty-one miles to its mouth on the Colorado River in San Saba County (at 31°07' N, 98°30' W). The stream was identified as Marble Creek before 1841, but surveys in that year designate it as Mineral Creek. It was named Cherokee on November 4, 1854, by a deputy surveyor of the Fisher-Miller Land Grant. The name came either from a battle fought near the stream's mouth on December 25, 1839, between the Cherokee Indians and a group of frontiersmen under the command of Edward Burleson, or from the Cherokee wife (Polly Ann Rogers) of a settler in the area. At one point the creek is dammed to form a lake. The surrounding flat to gently sloping uplands are surfaced by clay and sandy loams that support live oak, mesquite, Ashe juniper, and grasses.