Cheek

Cheek is on State Highway 124 seven miles southwest of Beaumont in central Jefferson County. In 1906 it was laid out by and named for J. R. Cheek. The community was on the Gulf and Interstate Railway and was inhabited largely by rice farmers who used the Beaumont Irrigating Company's canal, which cut through Cheek and irrigated the surrounding farms. By 1925 Cheek's population was estimated to be forty. Although Cheek remained an identifiable community, its proximity to Beaumont probably reduced the number of services available at the site. Its post office was discontinued in 1928. The Cheek Common School District, organized in 1907 and bolstered by the construction in 1939 of a new school building by the Public Works Administration (see GREAT DEPRESSION), was consolidated with the South Park Independent School District of Beaumont in 1951. By the 1970s a large Goodyear chemical plant was nearby. The community reported a population of sixty-two in 1990 and again in 2000.