Decker Prairie

Decker Prairie, also known as Decker's or Deckers Prairie, is a dispersed rural community located on State Highway 249 about thirty miles northwest of Houston and seventeen miles southwest of Conroe in southwestern Montgomery County. Settlement in this area just north of Spring Creek and the Montgomery/Harris county line had begun in the 1830s. The community was named for settler Isaac Decker, whose land grant was surveyed in 1839. In the early 1860s a Confederate powder mill operated on nearby Spring Creek, but an explosion in late 1863 destroyed the mill and caused the deaths of three workers. Decker Prairie existed as a farming community in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the earliest marked grave in Decker's Prairie Cemetery dates to the 1870s. In the early 1900s a school operated in the area, and 1930s highway maps depicted the school and numerous dwellings. Apparently the school closed by the second half of the twentieth century. On May 26, 1968, residents erected a monument commemorating the site of the powder mill. By the 1980s Spring Creek Park at this site served the recreational needs of Decker Prairie. No population estimates were available in 1990 or 2000.