[1] Once a thriving community and commercial center for cotton, only a church and the crumbling remnants of the former settlement remain.

Cheapside had three grocery and general stores, a drugstore, a broom factory, a blacksmith shop, a hotel, a butcher shop, a barbershop, a confectionery, several doctors, a Masonic lodge and a Woodmen lodge, a daily stagecoach, and at least two saloons.

[4] A small power plant was installed in 1925, and 1939 the county's electrical grid was extended to Cheapside.

[4] Some of the factors which led to Cheapside's decline include a weakening in the price of cotton—a major commodity in the community—during the Great Depression.

[2] The Victoria Advocate wrote in 2012 that in Cheapside there are "a few buildings teetering on collapse that become less and less visible through the trees and weeds, which have started to reclaim the abandoned town".