Lake Valley is a small unincorporated locality in the southwestern corner of Montague County, near the Wise County line, sitting in the broader Sunset community sphere. Its only feature with continuous presence in public records is Lake Valley Cemetery, a small private-property burial ground anchored by Simpkins and Rice family lineages with the earliest confirmed burials dating to 1908. The community has no TSHA Handbook entry, no state historical marker, and no USGS GNIS populated-place record. It is a rural address-and-cemetery locality — a place defined by what the land holds and who has been buried there.
The historical name was “Salt Lake Valley,” documented in three independent contemporary sources through 1907. The name compressed to “Lake Valley” sometime between 1907 and the 1908 cemetery record.
Geography
Lake Valley sits near the Montague-Wise County line, with the cemetery described in genealogical sources as “east of Sunset, just over the county line into Montague County, directly north of Alvord.” Approximate coordinates derived from Find A Grave records cluster near 33.44°N, 97.69°W. The locality drains most plausibly into the Denton Creek watershed, the south-flowing Trinity tributary system that runs through southern Montague County.
Access to the cemetery and the rural addresses associated with the Lake Valley name runs via FM 1749 and a branch gravel road known locally as Lake Valley Road, approximately 2.8 miles from the asphalt to the cemetery. The nearest US highway corridor is US 81 / US 287 through Sunset, about five miles to the west.
A critical administrative note: the area was disputed territory in the late nineteenth century. A 1897 legislative enabling act and a 1900 court ruling (Wise County v. Montague County, 52 S.W. 615) resolved a boundary surveying error that had placed the locality under Wise County administration. Any pre-1900 deeds, records, or burials for this area will be filed in Wise County Clerk records, not Montague County.
Settlement History
The Name’s Origin
The historical name “Salt Lake Valley” appears in three independent contemporary sources before the modern form takes over:
Cates 1907: Cliff D. Cates’ Pioneer History of Wise County lists the locality in a pre-Civil War settler roster as “Salt Lake Valley,” naming five pioneer residents: Toller, John Woods, Oliver Reed, Wm. Burress, and J.G. Stevens. Cates groups the locality with Paradise Prairie as part of a southwestern Wise County settlement cluster.
Wise County Messenger 1887: A March 1887 issue explicitly references “the Salt Lake valley, in this county” and reports that a Methodist presiding elder once held a claim on the locality under a Texas state grant for an irrigation company — evidence of actual viable water at the site.
Paradise Messenger 1890: A March 1890 issue reports that “two wagon loads of young ladies and gentlemen, of this place [Paradise], went to Salt Lake valley for the pleasure of spending the day in fishing” — confirming an actual fishable water feature and local recreational use of the name.
The “Salt” prefix, combined with the irrigation grant and fishing references, points strongly to a salt lick, salt spring, or seasonal saline pond as the natural feature that gave the locality its descriptive name. The name compressed from “Salt Lake Valley” to “Lake Valley” sometime between 1907 and the 1908 cemetery record. None of the five Cates pioneer surnames recur in the later cemetery record, which rules out a settler-family naming origin.
Pre-Civil War Settlers
Cates documents five named pioneer residents of “Salt Lake Valley” in a pre-Civil War settler roster: Toller, John Woods, Oliver Reed, Wm. Burress, and J.G. Stevens. These represent the earliest documented Anglo occupation of the locality. Wisecountytexas.info marriage records confirm that Stevens, Reed, and Woods family lines persisted in Wise County through the 1880s-1900s — the fifty-year gap between the 1850s pioneer layer and the 1908 cemetery cluster reflects families who remained in the region but were buried at other cemeteries.
The Simpkins Family and the 1908 Cemetery
The earliest confirmed occupants of the Lake Valley area by name are the Martin Simpkins family, who arrived in Montague County in 1901. Two family tragedies in early 1908 established the cemetery:
Mary Elizabeth Huddleston Simpkins died January 30, 1908, along with a newborn daughter. Martin Simpkins died February 14, 1908, two weeks after his wife. Their deaths left eight orphaned children, ages approximately 2 to 17. The cemetery transcription was made by Robert Jerry Ross, P.E., confirmed as a grandson of Laura Cordelia Rice, connecting the Rice family line to the record. The dominant family concentrations in surviving burial records are Simpkins and Rice, with Huddleston and Ross surnames also present.
Community Today
Lake Valley was never incorporated and never had a documented post office or commercial center of its own. It functioned as a satellite rural locality within the Sunset community sphere, shaped by the same forces that diminished Sunset itself: railroad routing that bypassed the southwestern Montague corridor, agricultural consolidation, and 20th-century population decline. Sunset was disincorporated on April 19, 2007. Lake Valley shares that trajectory.
The modern Lake Valley locality is rural ranchland with a small number of scattered residences. The cemetery is the only named fixed feature in public records. The Montague County Historical Commission’s cemetery inventory lists Lake Valley Cemetery as cemetery #55 of 121 known named Montague County cemeteries, giving the locality historical recognition even where state and federal indices are silent.
ZIP code 76270 (Sunset) serves Lake Valley addresses. School assignment falls under Bowie ISD, consistent with the broader Bowie ISD service pattern for southwestern Montague County.
Lake Valley Cemetery
Lake Valley Cemetery (Find A Grave #4719) is a small private-property burial ground reached via FM 1749 and Lake Valley Road, approximately 2.8 miles from the asphalt, crossing private land. The dominant family concentrations are Simpkins and Rice. The earliest confirmed burials are the January-February 1908 Simpkins deaths. A Historic Texas Cemetery designation status has not been confirmed in available desk-accessible records and requires field verification.
Primary sources: Cliff D. Cates, Pioneer History of Wise County (1907); Find A Grave Cemetery #4719; Wise County Messenger, March 5, 1887; Paradise Messenger, March 29, 1890; Wise County v. Montague County, 52 S.W. 615 (1900); RootsWeb / North Texas Records transcription by Robert Jerry Ross, P.E.
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