DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out in Coke County, there's a place called Cedar Hill — and the name is exactly what it sounds like. A cedar-covered elevation, sitting right there, giving the whole area its identity before most folks had even unpacked their wagons.
Around 1890, stock-farming homesteaders started settling in, drawn by the land, the way people were in those days. By 1891, they'd put up a one-room schoolhouse, sitting about a hundred yards north of the cemetery that still stands out there today. That school, that cemetery — signs of a community takin' root.
Now here's where you start to feel the wind shift. No post office ever came. No town ever developed.
Just folks and their farms and that little school and the cedar on the hill. Then the droughts came. And the lack of conveniences wore on people the way it does when there's nothing to soften the edges of hard living.
By 1904, many had departed. The school held on a while longer, but it closed after 1917. You might think that's the end of Cedar Hill's story.
Quiet little place, nearly forgotten, cemetery out there keeping its own counsel. But thirty years after that school went dark, something came up out of the ground that changes the whole complexion of the telling. An oil boom swept the county.
Cedar Hill, that humble stretch of homesteader country, found itself supplying two big companies — lying square within one of west Texas' largest oil fields. The people who left looking for conveniences could never have known what was sitting right beneath their feet the whole time.
What the marker says
The Cedar Hill area, settled by stock-farming homesteaders about 1890, was named for the nearby cedar-covered elevation. A one-room school built in 1891 was located about 100 yards north of the cemetery, which remains. However, no post office or town ever developed. Discouraged by drouths and the lack of conveniences, many people had departed by 1904. The school closed after 1917. 30 years later, an oil boom swept the county. Cedar Hill area, supplying 2 big companies, now lies within one of west Texas' largest oil fields. (1970)