What is the history of Copper Canyon, Texas?
The first white settlement in the area that would become Copper Canyon occurred in the 1840s. One of the more prominent settler families was that of Elisha and Mary Chinn, who came to Texas from their original home in North Carolina in 1852. They helped establish the first church in the area, a log-cabin chapel which eventually became known as the Chinn’s Chapel Methodist Church. The church is still active on what is now known as Chinn Chapel Road. The town gradually grew with cattle ranching as the mainstay of the local economy. The railroad came to the area in 1881, and the first public school was constructed in 1884. The town apparently got its name from “Agkistrodon contortrixCopperhead Canyon,” a part of the area formerly known for poisonous snakes. Population, never large, generally stagnated or declined in the first half of the twentieth century. After World War II the area’s rural charm slowly began to attract residents from the more crowded parts of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metro
