unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
Handbook of Texas
The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) is an American nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to documenting the history of Texas. It was founded in Austin, Texas, United States, on March 2, 1897. In November 2008, the ...
, its population was estimated at 135 in 2000.
History
John Hunt gave the land for Pleasant Grove Cemetery in 1852, marking the beginning of the area's settlement. There had been a Methodist congregation since the 1860s. Pleasant Grove became a railroad stop when the Texas-Midland Railroad constructed a line through it to Cooper, the county seat, in 1895. The town had 75 residents in August 1897. After renaming the church as Klondike Baptist Church of Christ after two months, four of them founded the New Prospect Baptist Church. In commemoration of the
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
gold rush
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...
, Joel Jefferson Hunt petitioned for a postal franchise that same year under the name Klondike. The town had 151 residents by 1904, and the Baptists had constructed a new building in 1901. A
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
office, a telephone exchange, a
blacksmith
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...
shop, a
hardware store
Hardware stores (in a number of countries, "shops"), sometimes known as DIY stores, sell household hardware for home improvement including: fasteners, building materials, hand tools, power tools, keys, locks, hinges, chains, plumbing ...
, a drugstore, three general stores, and a
dry goods
Dry goods is a historic term describing the type of product line a store carries, which differs by region. The term comes from the textile trade, and the shops appear to have spread with the mercantile trade across the British Empire (and Common ...
store served 400 residents and three doctors in the town in 1914. The president of First State Bank, which had a $20,000 capital, was J. J. Hunt. There were two sizable
cotton gin
A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...
s, and the shipment of
cotton
Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
was the main business. Throughout the next ten years, Klondike continued to be a busy shipping hub; in 1929, 350 people were living there. However, the cotton boom's affluence was short-lived, as the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
drove out residents of the neighboring rural areas. 154 people were living in Klondike in 1933. The village has one cemetery and two churches according to maps from 1936. In the 1940s and 1950s, Klondike was home to 150 people and six businesses. Four churches, Pleasant Grove Cemetery, Klondike Cemetery, and 50 residences were shown on maps of the location from 1964. By 1976, a community center was finished. Three churches, two cemeteries, the post office, and two businesses were depicted on maps of Klondike in 1984. There were twelve enterprises and 135 persons in the town in 2000.
A Methodist congregation and school first convened in the same structure on the property in the 1860s. The Methodists permitted the newly formed Baptist fellowship to use the school building. In the Klondike school district in 1905, there were two schools: one with 134 White pupils and three teachers, and one with 49 Black kids and one teacher. Following the school's 1945 fire, the West Delta school district was created by combining the Klondike and Shiloh school systems. Local kids were enrolled in the Cooper Independent School District by 1970.
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...