Little Cypress, TX

Little Cypress is a large unincorporated community and census-designated place in northern Orange County, about four miles north of Orange along State Highway 87. The 2020 census counted 1,968 residents. Its name likely comes from Little Cypress Bayou, and the settlement began after the Civil War when the first school was built. For generations, that school and Little Cypress Baptist Church served as the two places where area farmers gathered, learned, worshiped, and kept up with one another. In 1927, Little Cypress and Gum Grove schools consolidated, and later residents built a four-room brick school serving elementary and high school grades.

High school classes came and went before returning, and by the late 20th century the schools had joined with Mauriceville in the Little Cypress-Mauriceville district. The bayou, piney woods, farms, and highway still give the community its shape, while Orange and the Beaumont-Port Arthur metro sit close enough to pull daily errands outward. Little Cypress's local scoop is a Texas community whose identity grew from a bayou, a church, and a schoolhouse rather than a city hall.