Viesca

Cedar Springs, once known as Mill Tract, is on Farm Road 2027 nine miles south of Marlin in south central Falls County. It was named for several springs that flowed through a nearby cedar grove. In the early 1870s the community had a sawmill, a gin, and a store. In 1879 a post office was established, taking the name Viesca, in remembrance of the colonial settlement Sarahville de Viesca, which had been five miles north. The community had a population of thirty in the mid-1880s. In 1890 it had 100 residents, a general store, and a hotel. When the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway completed the section of track between Waco and Lexington in 1891, bypassing Viesca by six miles, many residents were drawn to the railroad and the newly established community of Lott. The population of Viesca fell to fifty by the mid-1890s. When the post office was discontinued in 1905, the community resumed the name Cedar Springs. In 1905 the community had a two-teacher school for sixty-six White students and a one-teacher school for eighty-one Black students. Until the mid-1950s Cedar Springs served as the focus of a common-school district; this district was divided and consolidated with the Lott and the Rosebud school districts in 1955. Cotton and corn were the principal crops grown by farmers in the Cedar Springs area until the 1930s. At that time tomatoes were introduced as a specialty crop, and farmers also began to grow watermelons, cantaloupes, and sweet potatoes. Stock, in particular turkeys, increased in importance after 1960. The population of Cedar Springs fell to fifteen in the early 1930s but increased to fifty by 1939 and to seventy by 1945. A school, a church, and several residences marked the community on county highway maps in the late 1940s. Ninety residents were reported in 1970 and 1990.