EDGEWOOD, TEXAS. Edgewood, is located on Farm roads 859 and 1504 and U.S. Highway 80 ten miles northwest of Canton, Texas in north central Van Zandt County. It has grown in three phases reflected in the community's three cemeteries. From 1840 to the 1870s settlers from eastern states founded a community two miles southeast of Edgewood close to the Dallas-Shreveport road and established the first cemetery. Barren Ridge, as this place was called, was the site of a post office opened in 1850. A second phase and second cemetery date roughly from 1870 to 1890; the railroad arrived, and in 1877 a county-seat war between Canton and Wills Point led to a decision to establish a new shipping point at Edgewood. District judge-elect John C. Robertson and his partner William S. Herndonqqv gave land for a railroad depot on the Texas and Pacific Railway. Canton citizens wanted a shipping point other than Wills Point. They built a nine mile road to a siding on the T&P Railroad in 1878. A sectionhouse and a freight and passenger depot were built at the edge of a wood and named Stevenson Switch. A town plat was filed on November 30, 1875; in 1877 a post office was established. Herndon employed John P. Groome to lay track from Canton to the new depot, and a dirt road was authorized. Before 1879 the Methodist minister from Canton held a meeting for the railroad men at Edgewood, thus assembling the first church congregation in town; a land grant on April 19, 1879, was obtained for a church that was built that year. By 1881 the Baxter House Hotel and a blacksmith shop were in operation in Edgewood, and the community was a stop on the Texas and Pacific. A third phase of development, reflected in Oak Hill Cemetery, is associated with the arrival of more settlers in 1890 and the start of many new businesses. Shortly after 1893 the original church was torn down and a second church was constructed east of Oak Hill Cemetery. A third, built in 1896, was sold to a black congregation. Northside Cemetery grew on land donated by John C. Robertson in 1896, but the deed was lost and burials declined. By 1890 Edgewood had a population of 650, a steam gristmill and gin, a church, a school, two general stores, and a hotel. The population reached 500 in 1914. The town had two banks, two cotton gins, a newspaper, a lumberyard, and an express office by 1919. In 1929 the population was 1,000; in 1931 it was 76l. In 1988 Edgewood had twenty-two businesses. In 1990 the population was 1,284 and in 2000 it was 1,348. In 1989 the Edgewood High School Basketball Team won the AA State Championship. In 1996 Edgewood was thrown into the national spotlight when a year long drought forced the city into water rationing and closing local schools. Local pastors prompted church members and other citizens of Edgewood to display "Pray for Rain" signs, and to always keep an umbrella at hand. ABC News 20/20 reported on the story interviewing city councilman Danny Eason. A pipeline was built from Lake Tawakoni to the Edgewood City Lake. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgewood%2C_Texas