Coon Creek
Valley Mills, Bosque County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Coon Creek Community evolved from the old Cyrus Community, the oldest settlement in southeastern Bosque County. The first settler was Temple Spivey who purchased land on the Brazos River in 1853. In January 1856, John Jackson Smith purchased 1,280 acres of land and sent his son, burton, to prepare the settlement. Burton Smith died in July 1856, and John Jackson Smith’s son-in-law, Silas McCabe and his wife, Ann Smith, relocated from Dewitt County to the Smith Plantation. In august 1856, school district four was established and Silas McCabe opened a school in a one-room log cabin on the south side of Coon Creek opposite his home. In 1883, the Cyrus Community evolved into two separate communities. The area south of Coon Creek became known as Smith Bend and the area north of the creek as Coon Creek. The two communities share a cemetery established by John Jackson Smith in 1856: the Smith Bend-Coon Creek Cemetery. A new log school was constructed at Crystal Spring on Coon Creek, two miles west of McCabe’s School. By 1900, a wooden frame schoolhouse was completed. In 1929, the existing schoolhouse was built. The Coon Creek Methodist Church Episcopal Church, south dates to 1874. In 1887, the Coon Creek Missionary Baptist Church of Christ was established. The existing church was constructed in 1916 and shared by the Methodist and Baptist congregations. The remaining remnants of the Coon Creek community include the 1909 home of William A. Vaughn, a two-story frame home known as the “pie” bonds house after Vaughn’s son-in-law, Walter Pope “pie” Bonds. The school, church and historic home in Coon Creek continue to bond the community together.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Coon Creek community grew out of the older Cyrus settlement, the earliest in southeastern Bosque County, where Temple Spivey bought Brazos River land in 1853. Within a few years John Jackson Smith established a plantation, a school opened in a one-room log cabin, and a shared cemetery took root. By 1883 the settlement split into Smith Bend and Coon Creek, and its school, church, and the two-story "Pie" Bonds house still knit the community together.
Why it matters
Coon Creek traces the full life cycle of a frontier settlement—from first landholder to plantation, school, and church—that still binds a rural community across generations.
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Related people
- · Temple Spivey
- · John Jackson Smith
- · Silas McCabe
Themes & tags
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