Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Cooper Cooper, TX

Cooper was founded around 1870, the same year Delta County was established, and was named for Leroy Cooper, the Texas legislator who chaired the committee that helped create the new county.

Delta County takes its name from its triangular shape, wedged between the north and south forks of the Sulphur River, and Cooper has served as its county seat from the beginning.

Cooper was incorporated as a town in 1881, the same year its county courthouse was built, and a post office had opened a decade earlier, in 1871.

The Texas Midland Railroad was chartered through Cooper in 1892, cementing the town's role as the main market center for Delta County.

Cooper reported its largest population, 2,563, in 1925, but the failure of the 1926 cotton crop devastated the local economy and the town never fully recovered.

In 1940, the Works Progress Administration demolished Cooper's old courthouse and replaced it with a new one built at a cost of $110,450.

The 2020 census counted 1,911 residents in Cooper, living in 756 households, with about 56% of occupied homes owner-occupied.

Cooper packs its population into about 1.5 square miles, giving it a 2020 population density of roughly 1,310 people per square mile — dense for a rural Texas county seat.

Cooper Lake, just south of town, began filling in September 1991 and opened for recreation the following year.

Cooper's economy still relies largely on agriculture, and the town sits on the eastern edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, about 76 miles northeast of Dallas.