Creedmoor

Creedmoor is at the intersection of Farm roads 1327 and 1625, fifteen miles southeast of Austin in southern Travis County. Though in the 1850s the site had general stores, a grocery, a meat market, a drugstore, a barbershop, a blacksmith shop, and an ice cream parlor, the name Creedmoor did not appear until the establishment of the community's post office in 1880. Some sources say the town was originally called Willow Springs; others say it was first called Creekmoor but was renamed Creedmoor by settlers who wanted the name to express their faith. Dr. Jacob T. Wilhite, once the country's foremost authority on rabies and the founder and director of the Pasteur Institute at the Austin State Hospital, was born in Creedmoor. The town's population grew from twenty in 1896 to 150 by 1915. In 1921 a cyclone destroyed its four-room school and one of the local gins. The town suffered a drought in 1925. A 1946 map showed Creedmoor with a school, two churches, seven businesses, and more than thirty dwellings. In the 1950s it had two gins, and cotton was still a major local industry. Under threat of annexation by Austin in 1982, Creedmoor became the ninth community in Travis County to incorporate. In 1990 Creedmoor reported a population of 194, a store, a post office, and the San Francisco Catholic Church. The population in 2000 was 211, with three businesses.