Fouke, Texas

Fouke is an unincorporated community in Wood County, located in the U.S. state of Texas. According to the Handbook of Texas, Fouke had a population of 30 in 2000.

History
A settlement known as Center is thought to have been in the county's southernmost region as early as 1866. Somewhere around 1873, the hamlet's residents erected a log structure that served as their church, lodge, and communal gathering place. For $6, a two-acre plot of land was purchased for a Methodist Episcopal Church in 1879, and eventually, a frame structure was built there. The largely African-American community never had a post office. Sometime about 1885, when George W. Fouke's lumber firm erected a sizable sawmill nearby, the name was changed to Fouke. At the confluence of multiple bladed earth roads, two miles north of U.S. Highway 80, Fouke had several residences by the 1930s. There were two churches and a business in the area. Those same two churches and a few widely dispersed homes were in the town by 1960. A dam on Little Sandy Creek created Lake Hawkins sometime after 1960, and by 1981, several new homes had sprung up in the community, which supported two churches, two shops, and a community center. The population was thirty in 2000.

On April 28, 1912, an F1 tornado hit Fouke, killing two women beneath a fallen tree. 10 other people were injured.

Geography
Fouke is located on Farm to Market Road 2869, 3 mi northeast of Crow and less than a mile west of Lake Hawkins in southeastern Wood County.

Education
The first school in Fouke took place in a log building. Only Black children were enrolled in the school, and the church pastor taught classes there. With a small number of White children in the area, they attended subscription schools in either Redland or Hawkins. It then became a school district for blacks in 1884, but there was no account of a school in 1896. There were 111 Black students and 17 White students at the school in 1932. Today, Fouke is served by the Hawkins Independent School District.

Notable person

 * Lillian Richard, actress