Center Point Community

The Handbook of Texas, quoted by the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, says the community took its name because the major roads through the settlement crossed at its center. Residents had a church by 1873 and a school by 1889, and in the 1874 Camp County seat election Center Point drew sixty-nine votes. Population fell in the late 1930s with the Depression, then again in the 1940s and 1950s as Black residents found better opportunities in cities. The 1983 county map still showed two churches, a cemetery and a community center, and the 2000 population was forty-one.

What the plaque says

Center Point Community In 1865 black Freedmen began this community. The Center Point Baptist Church was organized in 1873. The Industrial Union was chartered in 1889 to aid settlers in buying farms and building homes. A cooperative managed a brick kiln, sawmill and cotton gin. Under the leadership of Mr. and Mrs. L.B. Cash, the first principals, Center Point School became an important vocational facility. Students erected most of the structures on the 14-acre campus and there was a cooperative boarding plan. The school was consolidated with Pittsburg in 1950. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 8.9 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 17 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.

More markers nearby

• Center Point School — steps away
• Lafayette Cemetery — 4.3 mi
• Pleasant Grove Cemetery — 4.7 mi
• Bolton Cemetery — 6.3 mi