Site of Cooper School and Church
Burkburnett, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Arkansas natives James (J. D.) and Dora Cooper established an early farmstead here about 1900. In 1910 J. D. Cooper persuaded the county to create a school district for the community of Cooper which had developed in the area. Cooper School was built about 1910. Cooper Methodist Church, organized in 1913, held services in the school until a chapel was built about 1916. The chapel was relocated here in 1922 to a site near the newly erected Cooper School building. The school merged with the Cashion School District in 1927-28 and Cooper Methodist Church merged with Friberg Methodist Church in 1947.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Arkansas natives J. D. and Dora Cooper established a farmstead here around 1900, and in 1910 J. D. persuaded the county to create a school district for the growing community that bore their name. Cooper School opened about 1910, and Cooper Methodist Church, organized in 1913, met in the schoolhouse until a chapel was built a few years later. Both institutions eventually merged with neighbors — the school in the late 1920s and the church in 1947.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of a small farming community whose shared school and church, so typical of rural North Texas, gave it identity before it faded into consolidation.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. D. Cooper
- · Dora Cooper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Friberg School
Wichita Falls, TX
Friberg School opened in 1895 to serve farm families on the Wichita County prairie, its first classes meeting in Will Friberg's granary before John Friberg donated land for a two-room schoolhouse. It doubled as the community's gathering place, growing to three rooms by 1922 as enrollment climbed. After older students shifted to Wichita Falls High School and a neighboring district consolidated in, a 1969 fire finally closed the school.
Cashion School
Wichita Falls, TX
Wichita County built this one-room schoolhouse in 1902 on land donated by H.F. Knippenberg, naming it for county commissioner T.J. Cashion; it opened with a single teacher and twelve students. The 1918 discovery of oil at nearby Burkburnett sent enrollment soaring, and the school expanded through the 1920s to a peak of 286 students. When oil production fell in the mid-1930s the community declined with it, and the school closed by 1943.
John Gerham Hardin
Burkburnett, TX
John G. Hardin arrived in Texas in 1876 and began, of all things, in a dugout, before building a fortune through a store and vast landholdings. Rather than hoard it, he gave roughly six million dollars to orphanages, hospitals, churches, and colleges across the state—among them the schools that bear his name. This park was one more of his gifts to Texas children.
Burkburnett Masonic Lodge 1027
Burkburnett, TX
The Burkburnett Masonic Lodge No. 1027 was chartered in 1910, just three years after the town's founding, with an Eastern Star chapter added in 1921. During the oil-boom 1930s it claimed 400 members in a town of only 3,200 and produced eight District Deputy Grand Masters. The lodge laid cornerstones for landmark buildings including the First United Methodist Church, the library and local schools.