MOUNTAIN PEAK, TEXAS. Mountain Peak is on Farm Road 875 five miles northwest of Waxahachie in northwestern Ellis County. Settlement of the community took place in the mid-1870s. At that time it was called Singleton's, and a post office branch under that name operated for two months in 1878, after which residents decided to rename the settlement on the advice of G. J. Penn of Waxahachie. By the early 1890s the community had 160 residents, a church, a school, a half dozen businesses, and a cotton gin. Afterward the population declined, though Mountain Peak has continued to serve area farmers as a community center. In 1906 postal service ended. The number of residents dropped below 100 by the 1920s. From the early 1930s until the 1970s Mountain Peak had a population estimated at fifty. From 1986 through 2000 it had twenty residents.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edna Davis Hawkins, et al., History of Ellis County, Texas (Waco: Texian, 1972). Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County (Chicago: Lewis, 1892; rpt., as Ellis County History, Fort Worth: Historical Publishers, 1972).

David Minor