Erected in the Centennial Year to Commemorate Founding of Delta County
Cooper, Delta County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for shape, resembling Greek letter /\, and for evident origin of its land -- sedimentation at fork of North and South Sulphur Rivers. The first (1820-30) political activity here was oversight by the Sulphur Forks Indian Commission (of the United States) of the Caddo, Delaware, Quapaw, and Seminole inhabitants. After Texas independence in 1836, the Delta came under jurisdictions of Red River, Lamar, and Hopkins counties. Families and wagon trains from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states--and from other parts of Texas--settled here as early as the 1830s. The people of the Delta in 1868 petitioned for creation of the county; in 1870 the Legislature of Texas complied. The county seat, a new town to be in the geographic center, was named for Leroy Cooper, chairman of the House Committee on Counties and Boundaries. Gov. E.J. Davis named as commissioners to organize the county: Joel Blackwell, John P. Boyd, James Hamilton, J.W. Iglehart, and Thomas J. Lane. To supervise sales of lots in Cooper, Erastus Blackwell was appointed sheriff. The organizing election was held on Oct. 6, 1870, naming Charles S. Nidever as Chief Justice. Commissioners elected were John P. Boyd, J.F. Alexander, Alfred Allen and J.M. Bledsoe. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Delta County takes its name from its triangular shape between the forks of the Sulphur River. Before Texas independence, a United States Indian commission oversaw Caddo, Delaware, Quapaw, and Seminole people living here, and after 1836 families from Kentucky, Tennessee, and elsewhere settled the fork. Residents petitioned for their own county, and the Texas Legislature created Delta County in 1870, naming its new county seat for legislator Leroy Cooper.
Why it matters
The county's founding story layers Native presence, frontier migration, and Reconstruction-era politics into the making of a single Texas county.
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Related people
- · Leroy Cooper
- · E.J. Davis
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Camp Shed Cemetery
Cooper, TX
The land around Camp Shed Cemetery, near the North Sulphur River, was home to the Caddo before Euro-American settlers began arriving in 1836, and many early migrants used the spot as a campground on their way west. Serving the communities of Enloe and Mount Joy, the ground saw its first recorded burial — Johnnie Kerbow — in 1880 and was formally deeded in 1886, when it was still called the "Campstead" graveyard after a camp shed that once stood there. Veterans of the Civil War and both world wars rest among its graves.
Site of Shelton's Fort
Roxton, TX
In 1837, as the young Republic of Texas pushed settlement into the Red River country, Jesse Shelton raised a log house and stockade here that doubled as a way station and a refuge for families fleeing raids on the frontier. Designated a Republic post office in 1840 and used for Methodist worship, Shelton's Fort anchored the earliest civic life of Lamar County, where Shelton helped choose the county seat and served as a justice of the peace. The settlement that gathered nearby later took the name McGlasson after the man who bought the property in 1851.
Site of Fort Lyday
Ladonia, TX
Not long after Texas won its independence, pioneer Isaac Lyday raised a stockaded compound near the North Sulphur River, complete with living quarters, storerooms, and a shared community well. As raids intensified in the late 1830s, families crowded inside its walls for safety, and Texas Ranger Captain William B. Stout arrived in 1838 to organize a Ranger company that Lyday himself was elected to lead. The fort sheltered settlers until the danger eased around 1843.
Cumby
Cumby, TX
Named for a grove of black jack trees atop the highest point in the county—once beside an Indian camping ground and trail—this settlement grew from a frontier crossroads into a thriving trading center. A post office opened in a settler's home in 1848, and by 1860 the town had stores, physicians, blacksmiths, and a log schoolhouse. Renamed in 1896 for a Confederate veteran and legislator, the town later faded as improved highways drew commerce elsewhere.