Cooper, TX

Downtown Square, Cooper, TX.

At the end of the 2020 spring semester, I traveled to Cooper and stood at the site of William L. Mayo's original college. There, I 'felt the ghosts,' admired the open fields (and rustic buildings of downtown), and imagined what life was like in this small, rural town at the end of the nineteenth century. In this blog post, I will write a brief history of Cooper, a beautiful, older community that is roughly 16 miles northeast of Commerce.

The Downtown Square in Cooper features a fine gazebo.

Cooper (and the surrounding area) was inhabited by several Native tribes- including the Caddo, Delaware, Quapaw, and Seminole Indians- prior to the nineteenth-century Anglo settlement of Texas. The Natives were highly advanced in this period, constructing large wooden houses and generating a successful agricultural economy. Yet, their peaceful, sophisticated communities were plagued by many problems, including European diseases and surprise attacks from other tribes in North Texas. Following the Texas Revolution in 1836, a flood of white settlers squatted on these lands in what was then known as Red River County. In 1840, the Lamar County lines were drawn by the newly-established Texas government and the community that would later become Cooper was absorbed into it. Six years later, following a petition by several families who had grown tired of the poor road conditions in Lamar County and desired a new county seat, the region was designated as part of Hopkins County. Cooper was officially founded in 1870 (around the same time when Delta County was created), and a post office was quickly constructed a year later. The fledging town, which was named after Leroy Cooper, the chairman of the Texas House Committee on Counties and Boundaries, was incorporated in 1881 and held its first government elections. That same year, the people of Cooper built the county courthouse, an handsome building that attracted a lot of local press at its opening. By 1885, Cooper's main market center was thriving with trade and the town's population was around 300.

William Leonidas Mayo, a distinguished educator from Kentucky.

In 1889, a young education maverick named William Leonidas Mayo approached the Cooper Joint Stock School District Board and proposed an unusual idea. He offered to purchase the community's existing ill-equipped school and construct "a first-class, private college" based on the rigorous teaching principles he had learned from his academic tenure at Indiana's Central Normal College. The school board members were impressed at this idea and the man's ambitions, and promptly hired Mayo as the Cooper school superintendent. Mayo's dream of constructing a progressive college for the poorer, rural boys and girls from Northeast Texas came true. East Texas Normal College opened its doors to applause on September 2, 1889. The institution, which occupied a sizable plot of land on 600 SE 1st Street, was housed in a wooden-framed, T-shaped structure which contained classrooms, offices, a bell tower, and a small apartment for Mayo. An estimated 16 students attended classes at the college during the first term (note: the college was by name only since there were younger, primary-school children enrolled at ETNC for many years). Mayo met his wife, Henrietta Booth (nickname 'Etta') in Copper. The pair were married in the town, had eight children, and devoted much time in building the college (Etta was a music instructor at ETNC). Following a public hanging of a felon outside the school's grounds and a devastating fire on July 29, 1894 (which burned the administration building and destroyed most of Mayo's personal papers), the professor decided to move his college to Commerce. The Cooper-birthed school grew larger in the twentieth century and became what we know of today as Texas A&M University-Commerce (Go Lions!). 

After the 1894 fire, Mayo's College relocated to Commerce. All that remains of it today is a open field.

The Texas Midland Railroad, which was chartered in 1892, helped promote growth of the town, and by 1896, Cooper's population had exceeded 1,000 people. A new school for boys and girls opened at the turn of the twentieth century following the relocation of Mayo's college. Moreover, two churches, a bank and hotel were constructed during this era. By 1901, 21 businesses were registered with Cooper's Chamber of Commerce. The town also had two weekly newspapers, including the long-time favorite Cooper Review, which kept the rural folks up to date on national events that were happening outside of Delta County. Cooper's farming and ranching economies steadily grew at the start of the Progressive Era; the number of cash crops tripled, and the region produced over 70,000 chickens and 7,000 pigs yearly. By the end of the 1920s, Cooper had one of the largest agricultural economies in Texas. The town's population continued to prosper as the wealth of its citizens increased. Cooper reported its largest population, a staggering 2,563, in 1925. However, fortune would not last for long since the Stock Market Crash at the conclusion of 1929 brought the national economy to its knees. Delta County was hit hard by the Great Depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The community's prized cotton crop failed, forcing many to withdraw their savings. The town's bank was forced to close in 1927, plummeting the people of Cooper into despair. Several families moved out of Cooper, and the economy further fell flat on its face when the railroad failed in the mid-1930s (and the once-bustling train depot was later abandoned in 1975). Despite some assistance from the Works Progress Administration, a government-financed New Deal program, which resulted in the completion of a new county courthouse in 1940, Cooper suffered.

The original home of East Texas Normal College in Cooper, between 1889 and 1894.

The national economy stabilized and then boomed during World War II and in the late 1940s. Cooper's population returned to 2,350 people by 1950, however, again declined at the start of the 1980s due to an influx of migrants towards the Dallas suburbs. According to the local Chamber of Commerce records, Cooper had 60 operating businesses during the 1980s. Although population and the number of residences continued to slip towards the millennium, the area attracted many tourists in the 1990s when Cooper Lake, a man-made creation where many people like to fish today, was constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1991. Cooper currently has a population of just under 2,000 citizens. Despite the hardships people faced in the nineteenth century, Cooper endured and is now an authentically-rich piece of history in Texas's story. I enjoyed walking around the peaceful downtown square, noticing every ancient nook-and-cranny on the surviving nineteenth-century buildings. If you ever drive through Delta County, I would highly recommend swinging by Cooper and appreciating one of Texas's foremost agricultural districts back in the day.

The First National Bank was one of the first banks in Cooper.

Today, many structures in Cooper's Downtown Square are vacant. It was eerily beautiful to walk around this quiet, quaint community.