Allen, Texas

Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas, opened in 2012 at a cost of about $59.6 million for Allen ISD and seats 18,000 — the largest of the five priciest Texas high school stadiums. It is widely credited with starting the Texas…

Allen High School and its 18,000-seat Eagle Stadium (155 Rivercrest Blvd., Allen, TX) are where Kyler Murray went a perfect 42-0 as a starting quarterback. During his tenure Allen won three straight Texas state…

Down along Cottonwood Creek sits one of the oddest little engineering relics in Collin County, the Old Stone Dam, built in 1874 by the Houston and Texas Central Railway. Steam locomotives of the era had to take on water…

The same Eagle Stadium that became famous for cracked concrete was also the home field for one of the greatest high school football runs Texas has ever seen. Quarterback Kyler Murray took over as Allen's starter and…

The suburb spreading out around you owes both its existence and its name to a railroad and a lawyer who never lived here. As the Houston and Texas Central Railway pushed its line north toward Denison in the early 1870s,…

For forty years Allen had something the modern suburb would envy: a fast electric rail line that ran straight through town. In 1908 the Texas Traction Company strung up an interurban, an electric trolley system, that…

When the Houston and Texas Central Railway pushed north in the early 1870s, it laid out a town and named it Allen, after Ebenezer Allen, a former Texas attorney general and railroad promoter who helped drive the line…

The sprawling shopping village just off US 75 at Stacy Road is Allen Premium Outlets, and it is a big part of why people from all over North Texas exit here. It opened in 2000 under Chelsea Property Group, later folded…

Watters Creek at Montgomery Farm looks like just another handsome mixed-use shopping district, with a creek winding through a 52-acre layout of shops, restaurants, apartments, and a grassy village green dotted with…

On April 5, 1884, the local Odd Fellows lodge, IOOF No. 249, bought a little under three acres from John W. and his wife and laid out what became the Allen Cemetery. Fraternal orders like the Independent Order of Odd…

Allen grew up around its railroad depot, and a depot built in 1913 still survives as the centerpiece of Allen Heritage Village, a cluster of preserved historic buildings near the old downtown. The original frame depot…

You're driving past the site of Allen's original electric railway depot. Imagine this: it's 1908, and the Texas Traction Company's interurban line is bringing a surge of growth to this town. Hourly passenger cars ran…

Allen High School (Allen, TX): Most recent: 35-33 over Austin Lake Travis · 2017 6A Division 1 final.

Kyler Murray, Allen HS class of 2015 (senior season fall 2014). 42-0 as a starter; never lost a game he started. Three straight Texas 5A state titles (2012, 2013, 2014). 2014-15 Gatorade National Football Player of the…

Fertile land and plentiful water drew settlers to this area from as early as the 1840s. This part of Collin County was well populated by 1876 when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad built a water supply stop on…

Allen is on U.S. Highway 75 eight miles southwest of McKinney in southwestern Collin County. The town was established in 1870 by a purchasing agent for the Houston and Texas Central Railway and named in 1872 for…

On March 11, 1848, Ebenezer Allen, former Republic of Texas Attorney General, obtained a charter for the Galveston and Red River Railway. Track construction began in early 1856, and the company was renamed Houston &…

Lovejoy (Lucas) put 4 players on the statewide leaderboards of the 2026 Texas high school baseball playoffs. Tyler Scarborough had 46 strikeouts (5th in the state). Logan Corley had 43 strikeouts (8th in the state), and…

Lovejoy (Lucas), TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Lucas Smith (18 hits, #6 in TX); Brady Sommers (17 hits, #8 in TX).

John Sayles Leach, president of Texaco, Incorporated, was born in Allen, Texas, on September 30, 1891. After the death of his parents he was raised on his grandfather's farm. He attended Baylor University, where he…

You're driving through Parker, Texas, a community that started with a post office named Nathan back in 1887. By 1904, the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway came through, and residents wanted to name their town Kennard,…

You're driving past Corinth Presbyterian Church, a congregation that's been serving this community for over 150 years. It all started on August 2, 1846, when pioneer C.A. McMillen established the Corinth Society Church.…

You are now entering the most famous small town in the world—or at least, it was for a while. Parker, Texas is home to Southfork Ranch, the setting for the blockbuster TV show 'Dallas.' From 1978 to 1991, the iconic…

If you were watching TV in the 1980s, you know this place, even if you've never been here. Just down the road in Parker is Southfork Ranch, the home of the fictional Ewing family from the TV show 'Dallas.' But the story…

You're driving past the site of Forest Grove Christian Church, a congregation that started with simple prayer meetings in 1847 at the home of William and Mary Snider. Imagine, some of the founding members were veterans…

Hey road-trippers! You're passing the site of Lovejoy School, a testament to community spirit in education. This schoolhouse was born in 1917, merging two smaller schools into one 'Little Red Schoolhouse' with four…

In the fall of 1844, Jeremiah Muncey and his family were killed in an Indian raid at their homestead on the south bank of Rowlett Creek in what is now north Plano, between present-day Plano Road and Jupiter Road. Muncey…

You're driving past the site of a brutal tragedy that marked the end of an era in Collin County. It's late 1844, and hunters William Rice and Leonard Searcy stop by Jeremiah Muncey's hut. Inside, they find a scene of…

You're driving past the site of Plano's First Methodist Church. This congregation started way back in 1846 or 1847, meeting in the home of Joseph and Elizabeth Russell. Thirteen people gathered there, with help from a…

The Ewing family TV mansion from the Dallas soap opera sits on two hundred acres in Parker Texas and is open for tours every day. JRs bedroom is there. The…

You're driving through what used to be Fairview, a small community southeast of Lufkin. This place got its start back in 1896, not with a business or a railroad, but with a church: Fairview Baptist. The schoolhouse…

In most places, you live in a town, and your kids go to that town's school. Here, it's more complicated, and it's the source of the area's identity. You're in the heart of 'Lovejoy Nation.' The Lovejoy Independent…

The reason Lucas feels so open and green today is because its residents decided to build a town based on the word 'no.' Back in the late 1950s, this was a farming community of only about a hundred people, and the folks…

If you look to the east, you'll see the massive expanse of Lavon Lake. It looks like a natural feature, but it's actually a major piece of civil engineering that fundamentally reshaped this entire region. The project…

Lucas, Texas is home to two parks that offer residents a chance to enjoy the outdoors. Kenneth R. Lewis Park features softball and soccer fields, a paved walking trail, and a pavilion. Lucas Community Park has a main…

You're driving past Bowman Cemetery, established in 1868. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2008.

As you drive through Fairview, you're inside a massive, ongoing civil engineering and ecological experiment. The town's identity is built on a single rule: a one-acre minimum lot size for most residential properties.…

McKinney ISD Stadium and Community Event Center in McKinney, Texas, opened in 2018 at a cost of about $69.9 million, seating roughly 12,000. The Houston Chronicle (Nov. 2025) ranks it among the most expensive high…

The modern town of Fairview exists because of a powerful act of defiance. By the late 1950s, the city of McKinney was expanding, annexing unincorporated county land to grow its city limits and tax base. The rural area…

In 1958, Fairview's residents took a significant step towards self-governance. On April 21st, a petition was submitted to the county judge and commissioners' court, requesting an incorporation election. Following a…

You're driving past the land where John Myers McKinney settled his family in Texas back in 1846. Born in North Carolina, McKinney lived in Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas before making his way to the Lone Star State.…

At 1 Nature Place on the south edge of town sits a 289-acre slice of wild Texas that exists because one woman refused to let it disappear. Bessie Heard, born in McKinney in 1886 to a family that arrived just after the…

Walk the trails at the Heard sanctuary and you're crossing the floor of a vanished ocean. Around 93 million years ago, in the Cretaceous, a shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway split North America in two,…

U.S. Highway Seventy Five in Collin County, from the President George Bush Highway up to U.S. Highway Three Eighty, is the Sam Johnson Highway. The Legislature named it in twenty thirteen, setting aside its usual rule…

You're driving through Murphy, a town founded just twelve years before this story begins. In 1900, a local woman named May Cockrell saw a need for a Baptist church. She gathered friends and a preacher in her own home to…

You're driving through Murphy, in Collin County. Look for the McMillen Cemetery, established in 1901. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010.

The high school named McMillen, which opened in Murphy in 2011, carries the name of the man who started the whole place. Comfort Allen McMillen was born in 1818 in Washington County, Arkansas, married Lydia Maxwell, and…

You're driving past the Plano Mutual Cemetery, one of Collin County's earliest graveyards. It began in 1852 with the burial of Dr. Lillie on his uncle William Forman's land. Over time, it grew, incorporating pioneer…

You're driving past the site of the Rowlett Creek Baptist Church, a pioneer institution in Collin County. It all started in 1848 when seven members organized the Wilson Creek Church of United Baptists. By 1852, it was…

You're driving past the Williams Cemetery, a burial ground with roots stretching back to 1843. Grafton Williams, an early settler, donated this land for a community cemetery after his wife Harriet died in 1848. It's…

The old brick building at 205 North Murphy Road has done more jobs than most people. The federal Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that put the unemployed to work building public structures, raised…

You're driving past the site of the old Murphy School, built by the WPA in 1939. This building served as a beacon of education for just over a decade, closing its doors in 1950 due to consolidation. But its story didn't…

You're cruising through Murphy, a town that was once the heart of Texas agriculture. From 1880 to 1970, this land thrived thanks to its rich black soil and ample rain, drawing settlers from across the nation. It…

You're driving past the Murphy Family Cemetery, also known as the William Andrew Murphy Cemetery or Mouldon Cemetery. William A. Murphy set aside this land in 1872 for a private family burial ground. The last burial…

The Murphy you’re driving through is a marvel of modern civil engineering, built at incredible speed. In the 1990s, this was mostly open farmland with a few houses on wells and septic systems. Transforming it into a…

In 2006, the Murphy Police Department collaborated with 'Dateline' to conduct stings targeting alleged internet sexual predators. The operation ended tragically when one of the alleged offenders, Louis Conradt, an…

The suburb you're rolling through spent forty years trying to settle on a name. The first families arrived here in 1846, drawn by Peters Colony land grants, and the original townsite sat on land owned by Comfort Allen…

For most of its life Murphy was a freight stop, not a suburb. From the late 1880s into the 1950s the Cotton Belt depot here turned the town into a shipping point for the surrounding Blackland Prairie farms, loading out…

Of all the crops Murphy's depot shipped, the strangest legacy is onions. The black-soil farms along Maxwell Creek grew them by the wagonload, and the Cotton Belt cars hauled them out alongside the cotton and corn.…

Behind Murphy Middle School lies the oldest and largest piece of the town's memory, the Decatur, Maxwell, Murphy Cemetery, named for the three identities the community wore. James Maxwell deeded the three acres for the…

Murphy's First Baptist congregation began in a living room. In 1900, twelve years after the town took its name, a local woman named Mrs. May Cockrell gathered neighbors at her home to organize a Baptist church, and that…

Tucked behind Kimbrough Stadium at 670 North Murphy Road, the Preserve at Maxwell Creek is the wildest thing left in a city of subdivisions. It is a 42-acre greenbelt that follows the floodplain of Maxwell Creek, the…

Almost everything around you in Murphy is younger than its grandparents. As recently as 1970 the old depot town had dwindled to just 136 residents, a near-dead farm community the railroad and the cotton gins had…

In the early 20th century Murphy was a farm town that lived by its depot. The St. Louis Southwestern — the Cotton Belt — came through in 1888 after William Murphy donated the land for the tracks and the station, and…

You're driving through Murphy, Texas, a town that owes its very name to a generous landowner. Back in 1846, settlers were drawn to this area by land grants. The community was first known as Old Decator, then Maxwell's…

As you drive through Plano, especially along the Dallas North Tollway, you’re in the heart of a massive economic shift that redefined this city. In the early 1980s, Plano was a fast-growing but typical suburb, and Ross…

As you drive along U.S. Highway 75, you’re on the main artery of North Texas’s 'Silicon Prairie,' an ecosystem that transformed Plano. The story begins just south of here, in Dallas, in 1958. That’s when an engineer at…

You might be navigating Plano by car, but for forty years an electric train was the modern way to get here. From 1908 to 1948 the Texas Electric Railway — everyone called it the Interurban — ran Plano south to Dallas…

In the late 1990s, Plano became famous for a reason no city wants. It was known as safe, affluent, and successful, which is exactly what made the heroin deaths among its teenagers so shocking. Nineteen young people died…

Every September, the skies over Plano fill with a spectacle of color and light. This is the Plano Balloon Festival, an event that has become a beloved symbol of the city since it began in 1980. It started as a small…

Plano, Texas was named for its flat terrain. When residents were considering names for the town, they chose 'Plano' from the Spanish word for 'flat', in reference to the local landscape.

You're driving past the Aldridge House, built in 1918 in Plano's first residential neighborhood. It was home to C.C. Aldridge, an innovator in cotton seed strains who also served on the city council. This Prairie-style…

You're driving past the First Baptist Church of Plano, a congregation that started way back in 1852 as the Spring Creek Baptist Church. They built their first sanctuary a couple of miles south of here. When the railroad…

You're driving past the Young Cemetery, established in 1847 when Patience Cornell Young died. Her husband, Sam Young, brought his family here from Illinois in 1842, founding this burial ground on land he bought from the…

Twice in fourteen years, fire nearly erased downtown Plano. On August 27, 1881, flames tore through the business district along what was then Mechanic Street, destroying around fifty-two buildings and leaving the town a…

At 901 East 15th Street, beside Haggard Park, sits a modest brick building that was once Plano's window on the wider world. Built in 1908 for the Texas Traction Company, it served as the passenger depot and electrical…

You're driving through Plano, where the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s spurred growth. In 1881, Charles and Celestine Saigling moved here from Houston, drawn by business opportunities. C.F. Saigling became a civic…

You're driving past the historic heart of Plano, folks! Back in 1895, a fire wiped out the shared building of the Plano National Bank and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge. But these folks were resilient! They…

You're driving past what's left of Plano's early 20th-century transportation hub. Built in 1908 as the Texas Traction Company station, this building saw passengers and freight come and go on the North Texas electric…

You're driving past the old Fred Schimelpfenig Building, a Plano landmark since 1884. Built by the Sanger Brothers, it became the town's most prosperous dry goods store under Frederick Schimelpfenig himself. Though he…

You're driving past the W.D. McFarlin Building, one of Plano's oldest brick structures. Though it burned in 1895, W.D. McFarlin rebuilt it and it served as a hub for businesses like drug stores and grocery stores for 65…

You're driving past Mathews General Store. This was one of several brick buildings erected on Mechanic Street after an October 1895 fire. S. J. And Nancy Mathews came to Plano in 1893 and opened a store across the…

You're driving past Plano High School and Gymnasium. The Plano Institute opened on this site in 1882 before a public school system existed in Plano. In 1891, city officials bought the school and took over operations.…

In the mid-1990s Plano was the picture of suburban success, an affluent, fast-growing town near the top of every best-place-to-live list. Then its teenagers started dying. A cheap, unusually pure black-tar heroin from…

You're rolling across the flattest, blackest farmland in North Texas, and that's exactly how this place got its name. The first settlers arrived here in 1845 with the Peters Colony, the same land-grant scheme that…

Before the rails came through, this was just a stop on the Shawnee Trail, the cattle route that carried Texas longhorns north across western Collin County. Then in 1872 the Houston and Texas Central Railway laid track…

When Celestine Saigling built her home in 1918, it was unlike anything else in this prairie town. She hired the prominent Dallas architecture firm Lang and Witchell, and what they delivered was reportedly Plano's first…

Plano's oldest surviving house began as a log cabin on the lonely prairie where Fox Creek meets White Rock Creek. In the late 1850s and early 1860s the Fox brothers, Julian and Charles Meredith Fox, enlarged it into a…

In 1994 two former Soviet gymnastics stars, Olympic champion Valeri Liukin and world champion Yevgeny Marchenko, opened the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy, WOGA, in a Plano gym on West Parker Road. What came out of…

Every September the flat Plano sky fills with dozens of hot-air balloons rising over Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve, and for a weekend the suburb leans into being the self-styled hot air balloon capital of Texas.…

The ground under Plano is one of the reasons the town exists, and one of the reasons its foundations crack. This is the Blackland Prairie, a belt of dark, fertile clay soils laid down from the chalk and marl of an…

You're driving past the site where James Webb Throckmorton, a man who wore many hats in Texas, first settled. Born in Tennessee in 1825, he came to the Texas frontier with his family in 1841. He scouted, served in the…

You're driving past Pecan Grove Memorial Park, a place that started with land granted by the Republic of Texas in 1845 to Samuel McFarland. By the 1850s, R.A. Davis owned this land, and the first burials took place…

You're driving past the site of the Wylie Methodist Church, a congregation with roots stretching all the way back to the 1850s. Imagine early Methodist families gathering in homes, like the Spurgin home, which became…

You're driving past the site of Plano's first Christian Church, established in the mid-1850s. It started on the Barnett farm, with a small building that served as both a school and a place of worship. Imagine, traveling…

You're driving through San Patricio County, and right here is the site of St. Paul. This town wasn't just built; it was *marketed*! In 1910, land salesman George H. Paul bought up 70,000 acres and laid out this town as…

You're driving past the site of Shiloh Baptist Church in Plano. This congregation started way back in 1884 as the Mt. Zion Colored Baptist Church. Led by Reverend Z.T. Stuart, the founding members were Ammon and Lula…

You're driving through Collin County, and right here is the site of St. Paul, one of the oldest communities in the area. It all started back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1856</say-as>, when the St. Paul…

You're driving past Plano Cemetery, a resting place with a history as layered as the town itself. It began as part of the Peters Colony land grant for Joseph Klepper, who arrived here from Illinois around 1845. This…

You're driving past the site of the Collin County Farm, a place that served the indigent and the incarcerated for nearly a century. As early as 1858, Collin County had a system to help its poor citizens. This property,…

You're driving past the final resting place of Charles C. Stibbens, a veteran of the Texas Revolution. Born in Maryland in 1810, Stibbens arrived in Texas around 1835, just in time to fight in the decisive Battle of San…

You're driving past the historic Bradley Cemetery near McKinney. Edward and Nancy Bradley arrived here from Kentucky in the 1840s, part of the Peters Colony. They built their home and started this family graveyard on a…

You're driving by the McGarrah Cemetery, a small family plot with a big story of Texas settlement. George McGarrah arrived in the 1840s, part of the Peters Colony, leaving behind a life in Arkansas where his first wife…

You're driving through North Texas, not far from where a true Texas hero made his home. Samuel Robert Johnson, Jr. was a decorated Air Force pilot, flying missions in both Korea and Vietnam. But in 1966, his plane was…

You're driving through Plano, the city Gladys Harrington Public Library now serves. But back in the 1950s, Plano had no public library. Gladys Harrington, a civic leader and one of the first licensed female drivers in…

McKinney (McKinney, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Jacob Kuhn (0.422 avg); Tyson Todd (3 HR).

You're driving north of Dallas, right through Plano. This town's story starts back in 1844, when early settlers Jameson and Muncey were killed by Native Americans. But don't let that be the whole story. Just a year…

You're driving past the site of Fanny Finch Elementary School in McKinney. Laura Frances Shipe, known as Fanny, was born in Virginia in 1866 but received her education right here in Texas. After teaching, she married…

You're driving through Plano, Texas, the birthplace of Frank Earl Klepper, a Texas artist who dreamed of painting from the young age of fourteen. His journey wasn't easy; financial struggles delayed his formal training,…

You're driving through Collin County, not far from Plano, where James George Washington Vance made his home. Vance was a veteran of the Mexican War, serving with Texas Rangers, though he spent much of that time…

You're driving through Plano, Texas, the birthplace of William Penn Meroney, born here back in 1881. Meroney was a Baptist minister who later found his calling in academia. After earning multiple degrees, he returned to…

You're driving near Plano, Texas, home to William M. Weaver. He wasn't just a farmer, but a Confederate officer during the Civil War. Weaver enlisted as a captain in 1862, eventually becoming a lieutenant colonel. He…

You're driving through McKinney, and just ahead is the site of Saint Mark Baptist Church. Organized in 1879 by two preachers, Dick White and Rev. Jones, this congregation started with prayer meetings in local homes.…

You're in Plano, Texas, so here's the plains and flat-land tangent behind the name: when the post office was named in eighteen fifty two, Dr. Henry Dye suggested Plano because he understood the Spanish word to mean flat…

You're in Plano, Texas, so here's the plains and flat-land tangent behind the name: plains can form when sediment fills basins, rivers spread deposits, seas lay down nearly horizontal layers, lava covers older relief,…

You're in Plano, Texas, so here's the plains and flat-land tangent behind the name: level land makes cultivation, surveying, road grades, railroad construction, utilities, and rectangular development easier and often…

You're in Plano, Texas, so here's the plains and flat-land tangent behind the name: prairie grasses invest heavily underground. Dense roots reach water, store energy, hold soil, and let plants regrow after grazing,…

You're in Plano, Texas, so here's the plains and flat-land tangent behind the name: tornadoes are associated with open plains because the central United States often combines Gulf moisture, dry western air, strong wind…

On Christmas Day 1842, Indians attacked settlers Clements and Whisler in Collin County. Clements was killed with a tomahawk; his wife drove the raiders off at gunpoint. Mrs. Whisler hid under driftwood in a flooded…

You're driving past the Kirkpatrick House, a beautiful example of Queen Anne architecture. E.W. Kirkpatrick, a Confederate Army veteran, bought this land in the 1870s. He turned it into a thriving plant nursery. In 1901…

You're driving through McKinney, a town named for the very man we're talking about: Collin McKinney. He was a true Texas patriot, serving as one of the five men who wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence and then…

Near Finch Park once stood the actual log cabin Collin McKinney built around 1846, hauled here from his homestead north of present-day Anna. During Texas's 1936 Centennial, when Dallas hosted the big exposition at Fair…

At 901 Springbrook Drive, in the old Dallas North Estates neighborhood, is a swimming pool built in the exact outline of the state of Texas, Panhandle, Big Bend, Gulf coast and all. It was envisioned by Texas oil tycoon…

The Lowry Crossing you're driving through exists today because a group of neighbors decided to fight for it. The place is named for William L. Lowry, a Methodist circuit-riding preacher who brought his family from…

The very ground under Lowry Crossing is a marvel of agricultural science and an engineering headache. You're on the Blackland Prairie, named for its famous Houston Black soil series. This soil is a thick, dark clay…

You're driving past the Beverly-Harris House in McKinney, a beautiful Victorian built in 1886. This home was originally built by Warren Tully Beverly, a Collin County native who studied law with the grandfather of…

You're driving past the Howell House in McKinney, a home that's seen four generations of the same family! The story starts on land granted in 1845 to Edward Bradley. His daughter, Mary Ann, inherited it, and her…

You're driving past the John M. Martin House in McKinney, built around 1880. Martin, a local architect and builder from an early Collin County family, designed this home for himself. Notice the Queen Anne style elements…

You're driving past the Ammie Wilson House, a beautiful Victorian home built way back in 1891 by Hunter and Mary Farrell. It was a classic example of the sturdy houses in this farming town back then. Fast forward to…

This area wasn't always called Lowry Crossing. For decades it was just another part of rural Collin County. That changed with the Lowry family, who came to Texas from Kentucky in 1852. William L. Lowry was an old-time…

The town you are rolling through is named for the oldest man in one of the most important rooms in Texas history. On the second of March, eighteen thirty-six, at Washington-on-the-Brazos, fifty-nine delegates signed the…

The man this town is named for lived so long that he answered to five different governments without ever leaving North America. Collin McKinney was born in seventeen sixty-six, ten years before the American colonies…

Christmas morning, 1842. Somewhere in Collin County, two families had built their cabin out at the edge of the frontier. At first light, Clements and Whisler walked down into the bottom to cut house logs. Their wives…

Here is a naming quirk you almost never see. The town of McKinney and Collin County around it both honor the exact same man, and they split his name to do it. The county grabbed his first name, Collin. The county seat…

Before Collin McKinney was a signer of anything, he was a surveyor, and surveying on the Texas frontier was a real craft. There were no lasers, no satellites, no phone that tells you exactly where you stand. So how did…

There is a heartbreaker of a story tied to this town's namesake, and it revolves around one old log cabin. Collin McKinney's log home, built around eighteen forty-six, became a beloved relic. When Texas threw a giant…

You're driving past the birthplace of Rebekah Baines Johnson, the mother of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Her father, Joseph Wilson Baines, was a prominent figure in McKinney, teaching school, editing the local…

The filming location of TV's Dallas. JR Ewing lived here.

Wylie (Wylie, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Noah Smith (0.430 avg).

Just south of the square, Chestnut Square gathers a handful of McKinney's oldest buildings onto a couple of preserved acres, six historic homes, a chapel, a general store, and a one-room schoolhouse. Its prize is the…

Quick myth-buster as you drive into McKinney. If the name has you thinking of a United States President, it is easy to see why, but you are one letter off. The President was William McKinley, spelled M-c-K-i-n-l-e-y,…

The man this town is named for wore more hats than almost anyone on the Texas frontier. Collin McKinney was a surveyor, which means he measured and mapped the land. He was a merchant who ran a trading post. He was a…

You're driving past the Taylor House in McKinney, folks. Built in the 1860s, this place wasn't just a home, it was an inn. In 1868, cabinet maker Armistead Joshua Taylor bought it and, with his wife Tabatha, turned it…

You're driving past the James Waller Thomas House, built around 1868. Thomas was a major civic leader in Collin County and the editor of the region's first newspaper. He supported the Union and the rights of Black…

You're driving through McKinney, and just ahead is the Dulaney Cottage. This Victorian home, built in 1875, was the residence of Dr. Joseph E. Dulaney, a surgeon for the Confederacy. After the Civil War, he settled here…

You're driving through McKinney, and you might just pass the Dulaney House. Built in 1916 by Dallas banker John Field, it was for his sister, Lucie Dulaney. The home stayed in the Dulaney family for over fifty years.…

You're driving through McKinney, and right here is the John Faires House. Built in 1854, this Greek Revival home was crafted by John Faires himself. He arrived in McKinney from Tennessee just three years prior, bringing…

You're driving past the William B. Largent House in McKinney. Born in North Carolina, Largent arrived in Collin County in 1854 and built a fortune as a livestock trader and lumber merchant. In 1876, he hauled materials…

You're driving past the former home of William Clinton and Anna Belle Thompson, prominent McKinney newspaper owners and civic leaders. They built this house in 1894, on land bought from Clint's father, a noted local…

You're driving past the old Collin County Prison in McKinney. Designed by F.E. Ruffini, this High Victorian Italianate building served as the county jail for a remarkable 99 years, holding inmates from 1880 until 1979.…

You're driving past the former home of L.A. Scott, a prominent McKinney businessman. Square nails in the first floor hint this house was built before the late 1880s. It started as a simple one-story home. But soon after…

You're driving past the Gough-Hughston House in McKinney, a beautiful example of Victorian architecture with Queen Anne details. Built in 1898 by James Rowland Gough, a local attorney who also served in the Texas…

You're driving past the Barnes-Largent House in McKinney, built around 1910. Joe and Florence Barnes lived here on land Florence's father, a prominent merchant, had acquired. After Joe died in 1924, Florence sold the…

The old courthouse on the McKinney square tried its last case in October of nineteen eighty, and this was it. The county had already moved into a new courthouse the year before and left the old one sitting empty, but…

If you head east of downtown, you'll find a massive brick complex that was once the industrial heart of McKinney. This is the former McKinney Cotton Mill, opened in 1910 as the Texas Cotton Mill Company — one of only…

The beautiful, bustling town square you can visit today was almost lost to history. By the 1970s the historic heart of McKinney was in serious decline — businesses were fleeing to modern shopping centers, storefronts…

Both this town and the county around it carry the name of one man: Collin McKinney, who at 70 was the oldest of the delegates to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836. A…

The square you're standing on is a textbook example of what planners call a Shelbyville square, a courthouse parked dead-center in a block, ringed by storefronts and monuments. Texas has scores of them, and McKinney's…

In the winter of 1935, two former associates of Bonnie and Clyde rolled through Collin County and made local lawmen look foolish. Raymond Hamilton, a one-time Barrow-gang triggerman, and Ralph Fults had just burglarized…

One of McKinney’s most powerful early residents was James W. Throckmorton, a man who perfectly captured the turmoil of his era. He was a Unionist who actually voted against Texas secession. But when the Civil War began,…

As you drive along US Highway 75, you’re following the path of a forgotten piece of transportation technology that defined McKinney’s growth. In 1908, the Texas Traction Company completed its Interurban line, an…

Once a small town with little growth, McKinney's destiny changed with the arrival of the railroad in 1872. This pivotal moment transformed McKinney into the primary commercial center of Collin County, sparking massive…

You're driving past the law office of James W. Throckmorton, who served as Governor of Texas from 1866 to 1867. While the front of this building has been remodeled, the interior remains unchanged, preserving a piece of…

The long brick building at 610 Elm Street was, for half a century, the engine of McKinney. The Texas Cotton Mill Company opened here in 1910, one of only two mills west of the Mississippi making printed color cloth. It…

A block east of the square stands the 1911 McKinney post office, a handsome Italianate building with a tile roof and a three-bay arched entrance, designed by architect J. H. Suttle in the style favored for government…

On the afternoon of May 3, 1948, a violent tornado, later rated F3, dropped onto southeast McKinney around three o'clock and tore a path more than a mile long. Its winds flattened roughly 100 homes and damaged an…

Long before McKinney was a Dallas commuter suburb, it was farm country, and on one of those farms grew a boy who would become one of wrestling's first true giants. William Dee Calhoun was born in 1934 and raised working…

McKinney's local industry has seen a significant shift from agriculture to industry and manufacturing. Initially, the city relied on the production of corn and wheat, becoming a major distribution point for cotton…

You're driving through McKinney, and right here stands the old Collin County Courthouse. This building has seen a lot since it was finished in 1876. It replaced two wooden courthouses built after the county seat moved…

If you want lunch with the courthouse in view, Square Burger sits right on the historic downtown square at 115 N Kentucky Street, tucked into one of the old brick storefronts that ring the 1876 courthouse. It's a…

You're driving past the Aron-Harris House in McKinney, a beautiful example of Queen Anne architecture. Designed by New York architect Putnam Russell, it was built in 1889 for merchant Morris Aron and his wife. Imagine…

You're driving through Collin County, named for a man who saw Texas through a lot of its early history. Collin McKinney, born way back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1766</say-as>, was a land surveyor and a…

You're driving past the site of McKinney's first national bank, a building that's seen a century of financial history. Entrepreneur Francis Emerson started a local banking firm way back in 1869. That firm grew into the…

You're driving through McKinney, where the story of Collin County's courthouses unfolds. Formed in 1846, the county seat election was a bit of a wash-out – only eleven people voted, and McKinney won by default in 1848.…

You're driving past the Crouch-Perkins House, a beautiful example of Queen Anne architecture. Built in 1887 for the Crouch family, it showcases a rambling wood frame design with a turret, intricate shingled gable ends,…

You're driving past the E. A. Newsome House, built in 1895 by a local financier for his family. This grand Victorian home was a hub for social events in McKinney, boasting ornate woodwork and unique cocoa glass window…

You're driving through McKinney, and right here, the story of faith on the Texas frontier unfolds. Back on April 1, 1848, about twenty people gathered at the home of Nancy and Joseph Wilmeth, wanting the very first…

You're driving through North Texas, and right here in McKinney, Joe Marion Allison was born. He became one of country music's most influential figures, a DJ known as 'Jamboree Joe.' But his biggest impact? Songwriting.…

You're driving through McKinney, Texas, the hometown of Bessie Rollins Heard. She wasn't just a resident; she was a visionary who, in her eighties, founded the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary.…

You're driving through Collin County, Texas, and right here is the town of McKinney. This place, and the county itself, are named for Collin McKinney, a true Texas pioneer. McKinney was seventy years old when he arrived…

Pull over for a glimpse into turn-of-the-century Texas elegance! The Heard-Craig House, right here in McKinney, is more than just a beautiful building; it's a portal to the past. Built in 1900 for Stephen and Lillian…

You're driving past the site of the Elm Saloon, which opened around 1883. This place became a local landmark, known by a few names over the years, including the Rock Front and Old Rock Saloons. It was right next to…

You're driving through McKinney, Texas, a town deeply shaped by the vision of Kathryn 'Katie' Heard Craig. Born here in 1884, Katie came from a family that helped build McKinney's early economy. But her real passion was…

You're driving through North Texas, and right here, in McKinney, the Fifteenth Texas Cavalry was mustered into service back in March of 1862. This wasn't your typical military unit. These were mostly middle-aged men and…

You're driving through North Texas, maybe near McKinney, where the Fifth Texas Partisan Rangers got their start. Organized in late 1862 as the Tenth Battalion Texas Cavalry, these men were tasked with keeping the peace,…

You're driving through Collin County, and right here is where Rhea's Mills once stood. William Alexander Rhea, a businessman and legislator, started a flour and corn mill and machine-stamping plant here with his brother…

You're driving through North Texas, and right here, you're passing through the heart of a retail revolution started by the Sanger Brothers. Back in 1857, Isaac Sanger opened a small store in McKinney, Texas, which was…

You're driving through Collin County, not far from McKinney, where James Webb Throckmorton built his life. He arrived here as a young man, eventually becoming a doctor, a lawyer, and a politician. But when Texas faced…