Cottonwood

Cottonwood is on Farm Road 2114 four miles northeast of West in the northern corner of McLennan County. The area was settled by German immigrants who moved there from Washington County in the early 1880s. Cottonwood became the focus of a common school district in 1884 and continued to function as such until 1948, when the school was consolidated with the West Independent School District. A school, a church, and several scattered residences marked the community on county highway maps in the late 1940s. Cottonwood had only a few houses in the 1950s, and by the 1980s one business was all that appeared on county highway maps of the area. Cottonwood was still listed as a community in 1990. In 2000 the population was fifty.