The Hopper Community is located on Highway 240, just below Caddo Gap, and on the road to Fancy Hill. I is in the southernmost edge of Montgomery County, and lies nestled below Tweedle Mountain with South Fork Creek running at the foot of the mountain. The South Fork empties into the Caddo River and is usually called the South Fork of the Caddo.
First known as Parks, because of Jack Parks, an early resident who gave land for a community building which was used for a school and Masonic Lodge, as well as serving as a church for any group who wished to use it.
A little stream ran near the building and was named Parks Branch. The area was name to the Parks Township in Montgomery County, and is still known as such.
When William Jackson Hopper came, around 1868, the mail was left a Hopper's store, which was about a mile north of the main community-where the Hoppe r Church of Christ sits. It was from this first mail drop that a post office was established and name Hopper.
Postmasters were: John C. Smith 3/1888; Isah C. Cotney 2/1889; Joseph Hopper 8/23/1889; George T. Harris 8/1892; William Thomas 5/1894; William E. Hopper 1/1896; Carrol McGee 11/1901; William A. Bagley 12/1908; Allie M. Shields (the first female to serve) 6/1909; Lona Shields 9/1946; Avedelle Whisenhunt 4/1959. The post office at Hoppe was discontinued on February 22, 1968.
According to an article by Gerald, Lenora, and Dona Tweedle, included in the Montgomery County History Book, Vol. I, the post office moved and was located in the home of at least some of those who served as postmaster.
Allie Shields ran the post office while it was located in her husband' general store near the community building. According to the authors mentioned above, she retired when a tornado roared through the community on Saturday evening, December 28, 1946, and destroyed the store building.
Hopper, like most rural communities in the South, had several stores, as most people couldn't travel great distances for staple goods. W.D. Shields, Guilford Coffman and John Herring allowed stores, and Mr. Coffman also operated a gristmill. Corn was ground into meal and a part, (known as a toll) was given to the mill owner for the grinding. Mr. Shields owned a stave mill and he dammed up Parks Branch to generate power to run it. J.J. Bumpas had a sawmill and later became partners with Robert Brakefield. The first electric lights in the community were at the home of Mr. Coffman and were run on a Delco system.
There is a cemetery in the community, but it is located a distance from the old school and church building. According to the abstract, John F. Pinkerton, Sr. set aside a spot, "100 feet wide by 300 feet long to be used as a burying place for him and his family." The cemetery is located seven miles west of the intersection of Highways 8 & 240. (The old Baysinger Cemetery and another one are located very near the Caddo River bridge).
Family names in the Hopper Cemetery are: Altman, Arnold, Barns, Beck, Birdwell, Bohannon, Brakefield, Breit, Bright, Bumpas, Coffman, Cogburn, Davis, Duke, Faulkner, Floyd, Garrett, Golden, Guy, Hayes, Herring, Hickman, Hollifield, Hopper, Horn, Hunter, Jackson, Konold, Ledbetter, Markham, McClane, McDaniels, McGee, McGough, Milam, O'Neal, Parks, Phillips, Pierce, Pinkerton, Porter, Price, Putman, Sandberg, Sandbert, Shields, Spears, Standridge, Swan, Tabor, Tackett, Thomas, Thompson, Tolleson, Tweedle, Walker, Williams, Willingham, Witt, Woodall, and Wright.
Many box suppers, Christmas programs, and singing schools were held at the old community building. One of the first was in 1902, with teachers J.L. Ray, Silas Horn and Olen Pate. People came along the "big road," as the Highway 240 was then known, to attend. All along the road there wee stretches of road named for families, or events, or things. There was "Wallace Hill"; "Butter Flat"; "Welch Hill"; "Up the Creek" meant toward Fancy Hill, while "across the creek" mean toward the Thomas Community. The "big road" was paved in the late 1950s.
The Church of Christ met in the old community building until a new building was constructed in the 1950s.
An interesting side note. A movie group came to the area in the 1980s to shoot a pilot and they used the community building in the movie. They made a sign to go over the door which read, "Muddy Fork Church of Christ", and that sign has gotten picked up in photograps and passed around as the name of the church. It is not, never was and never will be, I'm sure. The movie was about the Taylor Polk family which moved over to Muddy Fork, in Pike County, in the 1850s. They Polks lived in "The Wilds" as it was called, now near Norman, on the road and creek named for them, Polk Creek Road, and Polk Creek. I'm working on a documented history of this family and would appreciate any information regarding them in Montgomery County. Actually, the Wilds was an area which took in most of the Caddo Gap, Norman, Black Springs, Fancy Hill, and out to Albert Pike-Greasy Cove, area.
The sign is seen on this photo of the building.