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Paradise, Texas

Everything Paradise is known for

35 songs mention this city

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Music in Paradise

Songs About Paradise

Paradise
Craig Morgan
54%
"SONG TITLE: Paradise"
A Town Called Paradise
Mike Blakely
49%
"A Town Called Paradise"
GOD & GUNS N’ ROSES
Tyler Braden
16%
"When that jukebox dime finally hit "Paradise City""
Heart on Fire
Eric Church
16%
"Hat turned backward, singin' "Paradise City""
Song for Another Time
Old Dominion
15%
"Paradise City, where the grass is green"
Paradise
Ll Cool J
15%
"The rest of your life, I'll take you to paradise"
Back to Paradise
38 Special
12%
"Take me back to paradise"
I’ve Never Been to Me
The Temptations
12%
"I've been to paradise"
Locked Out of Heaven
Bruno Mars
10%
"'Cause your sex takes me to paradise"
Dream of Life
Patti Smith
10%
"Flung from paradise"
Welcome to Paradise
Green Day
10%
"Welcome to paradise"
Everything
Mary J. Blige
10%
"and you bring me paradise"
You Among the Flowers
Ana Egge
8%
"Paradise in full bloom"
Travelin’ Light
J.J. Cale
8%
"We can go to paradise"
Fruitcakes
Jimmy Buffett
8%
"Paradise, lost and found, paradise, take a look around"
Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Meat Loaf
7%
"I can see paradise by the dashboard light"
Cherokee Maiden
Bob Wills
7%
"And straight as an arrow flies, we'll ride to Paradise"
Cheeseburger in Paradise
Jimmy Buffett
5%
"Cheeseburger in paradise"
If The Good Lord’s Willin’ (And The Creeks Don’t Rise)
Hank Williams, Jr.
5%
"Tomorrow morning I'll be in paradise"
Ferris Wheel
Young Nudy
4%
"Uh, Paradise City, bitch, better cruise through that bitch slow"

Showing top 20 of 35 songs · Hear more in the free iPhone app

Artists From Paradise

No artists from Paradise in the database yet.

Know one? Add it →

Rivers & Roads in Song near Paradise

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Paradise.

Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Interstate 35 45 songs Brazos River 43 songs

History of Paradise

Clearing the Road Ahead of the Chase RoadyGoat

2009

This piece of State Highway One Fourteen, from Twelfth Street in Bridgeport to County Road Thirty Three Thirty, is the Sergeant Randy D. White Memorial Highway. Randy White served five years with the Bridgeport Police Department. On the second of April, two thousand nine, a Wise County deputy tried to stop a driver after a hit and run. The man got away, and when officers found him a short time later in a stolen vehicle, another pursuit began. Other officers were chasing him. Sergeant White's job was to clear traffic out of the way ahead of the pursuit, on Texas One Fourteen near Farm Road Twenty One Twenty Three. He was parked on the shoulder when the suspect rammed the back of his patrol car and pushed it into a pickup truck hauling a trailer. Sergeant White was killed. He was thirty two, and he left a wife and a five year old daughter. The driver pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to life without parole. The Legislature's bill analysis says clearing that highway helped save the lives of many other motorists. The Bridgeport Police Department posthumously gave him its Medal of Honor, for bravery and valor. In two thousand twenty one, lawmakers added his name to this road.

RoadyGoat → · 3.5 mi away

Athena Strand and the Paradise Alert RoadyGoat

Paradise is a rural town in Wise County, near Fort Worth. On November thirtieth, two thousand twenty two, seven-year-old Athena Strand disappeared from outside her father's home there. A contract delivery driver for FedEx had just dropped off a package. It was a Christmas present for Athena, a box of You Can Be Anything Barbies. Her mother begged for an Amber Alert. Under Texas law at the time, police had to be able to say a child was taken, and the alert did not go out until the next day. Hundreds of people searched. The First Baptist Church of Cottondale became a gathering place for volunteers and for Athena's family. On December second, her body was found southeast of Boyd. The driver, Tanner Horner, was charged with capital murder. Pink was Athena's favorite color. Students and teachers across North Texas wore it for her, and more than one hundred people in pink shirts prayed outside the Wise County Courthouse in Decatur. Her mother took her grief to the Capitol. House Bill thirty-five fifty-six, filed by Representative Lynn Stucky, became law on June thirteenth, two thousand twenty three. It is called Athena's Alert. It lets police send a regional alert for a missing child within one hundred miles, without waiting to confirm an abduction. The trial was moved to Fort Worth. On April seventh, two thousand twenty six, Horner pleaded guilty, and on May fifth, two thousand twenty six, a Tarrant County jury sentenced him to death. An appeal was filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in May two thousand twenty six, and his request for a new trial was denied by default that July. After the sentence, the Wise County Courthouse was lit up pink overnight in her memory.

RoadyGoat → · 4.7 mi away

The Iron Horse Arrives RoadyGoat

Imagine this spot in 1893. Paradise had been here for twenty years already -- Bill Anderson's general store, a post office since 1876, a place folks first called Eldorado and then Paradise Prairie for the wildflowers. Then came the sound of hammers on steel. The Rock Island line was pushing through Wise County, and it missed the town by a mile. So Paradise did what dozens of Texas towns did in those years: it got up and walked. The whole community picked up and moved a mile northeast to sit alongside the tracks. It was not a boomtown after that -- Paradise never ran much past four or five hundred people -- but it became a real market. By 1900 there were two cotton gins, two lumberyards, two hotels, a grade school, and a weekly paper called the Echo. Farmers could ship cotton and cattle out and get a better price for both. The tracks are gone now, but the grid of streets they anchored is the Paradise you're driving through, and it sits a mile from where the town started.

RoadyGoat → · 4.7 mi away

The Urschel Kidnapping - Shannon Ranch near Paradise

1933

George 'Machine Gun' Kelly and Albert Bates kidnapped Oklahoma City oilman Charles Urschel on July 22, 1933, holding him over a week at the Shannon family ranch near Paradise, Wise County, Texas. Clues Urschel memorized while blindfolded led the FBI to the farm; a $200,000 ransom was paid before his July 30 release.

Historical Marker →

Matthews, Mansell Walter

1836

Mansell (Mansel, Mansil) W. Matthews, preacher, doctor, legislator, and soldier, was born in Kentucky on December 24, 1806, the son of Joseph and Penninah Matthews. He was raised and educated in Kentucky and Tennessee, then preached and taught in Tennessee and Alabama until 1835. He married Sarah Ann Gehagan in Kentucky and began a career as a physician and Disciples of Christ minister; the couple had ten children. In late 1835 Matthews and his family left Tennessee for Texas with a number of other families. According to one source, they were accompanied through the early part of their journey by David Crockett and his men. Matthews was a large man who weighed about 275 pounds. He arrived in Red River County on January 17, 1836. After settling his family and winning the March 17 election as representative from Red River County to the First Texas Congress, he joined the Texas army and served as a surgeon until July 1836. He was at the battle of San Jacinto and attended the wounded Gen. Sam Houston when Houston's soldiers brought Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to Houston as a captive. Matthews attended the first session of the Congress, which met from October 3 to December 22, 1836, but then resigned his seat, having been elected president of the Board of Land Commissioners of Red River County. He also represented Red River County in the House of the Seventh Congress (1842–43) and at the Convention of 1845 . In addition to other military activities, he served with Company F of the Texas Rifles during the Mexican War . Matthews was an influential preacher in Hopkins County from about 1844 to 1855. He bought and sold thousands of acres, witnessed the marriage of numerous couples, and was postmaster at White Oak from 1847 to 1850. By 1855 he had apparently moved to the Rockwall area, where he was invited to address the people on "the evils of intemperance" on November 13. By 1859 he was a resident of Cooke County, where he chaired a county Democratic convention on May 7. Before and after the Civil War he was the leader of a large family that followed the grass with a large herd of cattle to North Texas in the summer and Central Texas in the winter. Matthews preached all along the frontier from Cooke County to Burnet County. In 1864 he was arrested as a Union sympathizer by a vigilante committee, charged with treason against the Confederacy, and imprisoned and sentenced to hang in Gainesville, where many had been hanged by a vigilante court on the same charge ( see GREAT HANGING AT GAINESVILLE ). Capt. Ephraim M. Daggett , a fellow Mason of Fort Worth, received word from Matthews and hurried to Gainesville, where he convinced the judge that no act of treason had been committed. Matthews's first wife died at Thornton, Texas, in 1870, and in 1872 he married Margaret Spencer, with whom he had four children. During the last twenty years of his life he lived in Wise County, where he bought and sold land, preached, practiced medicine, and operated a drugstore in Paradise with his son. He lived in Paradise for ten years and died there on April 13, 1891. Through his grandfather, Walter Matthews, Mansell was a descendent of Oliver Cromwell. His cousins, Joseph W. and James E. Matthews, were governor and auditor of Mississippi, respectively. His son, J. J. Matthews, was judge of Somervell County. His family also married into the family of Collin McKinney , when Elizabeth S. Matthews married John W. McKinney, Collin's son, and Margaret Helen Matthews married Collin M. Milan, Collin's grandson.

Tsha Handbook →

Matthews, Dr. M. W.

1836

Dr. M. W. Matthews (December 29, 1806 - April 13, 1891) Pioneer physician and preacher. Born in Kentucky. As army surgeon in Texas Revolution (1836), treated Gen. Sam Houston at Battle of San Jacinto. Served in the 1st and 7th Congresses of the Republic. Took part in Mexican War (1846). A firm Unionist during Civil War (1861-65), he once barely escaped hanging at hands of Southern vigilantes. Founded many churches across state. Was married twice: first to Sarah Gehagan and later to Margaret Spencer. Recorded - 1971

Historical Marker →

Hunt, Col. William Hudson

1836

(1815-1864) Born in Ithaca, New York, William Hudson Hunt became a principal figure in the development of Wise County. He came to Texas in 1836, joining the War for Independence. He then served in the Army of the Texas Republic, participating in the Santa Fe Expedition. His engineering and surveying skills led to an appointment to the council which located the site of the Texas capitol. He also surveyed public and school lands and proposed roadways. In 1855, Col. Hunt became an early Wise County pioneer, settling along the Trinity River's West Fork. He built his residence and ranch headquarters on a hill (later Cactus Hill) at the confluence of a creek (later Hunt's Creek) with the West Fork. He and his wife, Catherine (Cordel), raised five children on the land. Hunt built livestock and grazing operations, and together with neighbors, including noted rancher Daniel Waggoner, he began a cattle business that later thrived. Hunt also specialized in raising sheep. Col. Hunt was also a community leader. He laid out the county seat of Taylorsville (later Decatur) and became postmaster at Cactus Hill. He was also active in church and Masonic activities. Additionally, he led residents in a successful effort to encourage routing of the Butterfield Overland Mail Route through Wise County. In 1861, after the death of his wife, Col. Hunt moved his family to Decatur. His death in 1864 was the result of a wreck caused by a runaway team of horses leading his vehicle. Col. Hunt and other family were originally buried in their family cemetery in Cactus Hill, but the construction of a dam and creation of Lake Bridgeport led to their reinterment here. Today, Col. Hunt is remembered as a pioneer, rancher and noted leader in the early days of Wise County. (2008)

Historical Marker → · 4.6 mi away

Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation

1952

Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, with headquarters at the Metro Center in the planned community of the Woodlands just north of Houston in the 1990s, was a major independent producer of natural gas, natural-gas liquids, and oil. In the early 1990s the company was involved in gas transmission and oil and gas exploration and production. It was also involved in real estate development in the Houston-Galveston area. At that time the firm had assets of more than $2 billion, including roughly 1.7 million acres of mineral leases and 60,000 acres of real estate. It owned fifty-seven gas-processing plants and a network of 5,000 miles of intrastate pipeline. By the end of fiscal year 1993 the corporation annually produced 58 billion cubic feet of natural-gas and more than 19 million barrels of natural-gas liquids, crude oil, and other products from holdings variously in North Texas, Limestone County in East Texas, and southeastern New Mexico. In the 1990s, Mitchell began construction of an underground salt-dome natural-gas storage facility in East Texas and developed a plant to produce MTBE, an environmentally cleaner gasoline additive mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act. The company's 2,800 workers enjoyed a stock purchase and savings plan, health and retirement benefits, and a company Wellness Center at headquarters. Mitchell Energy and Development grew out of Roxoil Drilling, an enterprise incorporated and renamed Oil Drilling in 1946. Among its stockholders was George Phydias Mitchell , the son of a Greek goatherd named Savas Paraskivoupolis, who, to simplify his name, renamed himself Mike Mitchell, after his paymaster when he worked for the railroad. In 1905 Paraskivoupolis settled in Galveston, where his son George was born in 1919. George Mitchell grew up in the immigrant neighborhood of Galveston known as the League of Nations, living in the building that housed his father's dry-cleaning shop. He attended Texas A&M, where he operated a laundry concession and sold stationery to pay his way through. He graduated in 1940 with a degree in petroleum engineering and geology. After working briefly for Amoco and serving with the United States Army Corps of Engineers in World War II , Mitchell entered a newly-formed wildcatting partnership called Christie, Mitchell, and Mitchell with his brother, Johnny, and H. Merlyn Christie. This firm bought out other Oil Drilling shareholders, while Johnny Mitchell and H. Merlyn Christie attracted important investors, including oilman Robert Everett (Bob) Smith , Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, members of the Oshman and Weingarten merchant families, and Galveston gambling magnate Sam Maceo. In 1952 the partners drilled their first well in North Texas, in an area known as the "Wildcatters' Graveyard," and made one of the biggest gas strikes in industry history in Wise County near Fort Worth with the discovery of the rich gas resources of the Boonsville field. In 1953 the Christie, Mitchell and Mitchell Company, a subsidiary of Oil Drilling, was formed and began acquiring leases and drilling in North Texas. In 1954 the company arranged to supply natural gas to the Chicago metropolitan area through the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America. Company headquarters for Oil Drilling were in Houston from 1955 to 1971. In 1957 the firm diversified into gas processing with the construction of its GM&A Gas Products Plant at Bridgeport, Texas. George Mitchell became company president and chief executive officer of Oil Drilling in 1959, and around 1962 H. Merlyn Christie retired from the company, leaving the brothers to split their shares seventy-thirty, with George taking the bigger slice. Known subsequently as Mitchell and Mitchell Oil and Gas Corporation, the enterprise, which by this time employed 225 workers and drilled up to 197 wells a year, consolidated its holdings under the control of George Mitchell. After 1955 the firm began to diversify into real estate. When George Mitchell became presi

Tsha Handbook → · 5.2 mi away

Owens, Ruby Agnes [Texas Ruby]

1908

Texas Ruby, country singer, was born Ruby Agnes Owens in Wise County, Texas, on June 6, 1908. She was the daughter of Curcley Sly and Susan Frances Owens. Owens was raised in a musical family. One of her brothers, Doie Hensley, went on to country music fame as “Tex” Owens , the radio cowboy. About 1930 Ruby accompanied her father and brothers on a cattle drive to Fort Worth. As they sat waiting at one of the cattle buying centers, she and her brothers began singing some old cowboy songs to pass the time. During this impromptu sing-a-long, a crowd of cowboys and cattle buyers gathered around to listen. Soon, a radio station stock holder from Kansas City who happened to be in the crowd offered Owens her first spot on national radio . Texas Ruby, as she came to be called, would be a pioneering figure among female performers within a mostly male-dominated country music industry. Labeled the “Sophie Tucker of the Feminine Folk Singers,” she sang mostly honky-tonk material in a strong, distinctive deep alto and wrote many of her own songs. In the early 1930s she traveled north and performed in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. While in Cincinnati, she met Zeke Clements and soon performed at the Grand Ole Opry with Clements and his Bronco Busters. They were later regulars on a barn dance program on WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa, for two years in the mid-1930s. They recorded for Decca in Dallas in February 1937; one of the songs was Jimmie Rodgers ’s “Blue Yodel No. 1.” Then they traveled to California to audition for singing parts on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , but Ruby missed her audition and parted ways with Clements and his band. In 1937 at the Texas Centennial Celebration in Wise County, Owens met famous “trick fiddler,” Curly Fox (born Arnim LeRoy Fox.) The couple married in 1939 and formed a popular husband-and-wife team that performed on stage and radio throughout the country and eventually signed with Columbia Records. From 1944 to 1948 the couple appeared frequently at the Grand Ole Opry and were regular stars of the popular Saturday Night Grand Ole Opry . While performing at the Grand Ole Opry , they recorded such tunes as “You’ve Been Cheating on Me,” and “Ain’t You Sorry That You Lied.” During that same time period, Ruby released hit songs of her own with both Columbia Records and King Records. The couple moved to Houston in 1948. For twelve years they continued to hone their act in hopes of someday performing on live television. In 1960 they got their chance when they moved to Los Angeles to appear on the Town Hall Party television show. When they did not garner as much attention as they had hoped through this television appearance, the couple moved to Nashville in 1962. Unfortunately, by this time Owens’s health was failing, so her husband often performed at the Grand Ole Opry alone. While in Nashville, the couple did manage to record a comeback album that was released on the Starday label. A few days after recording this final album, Owens burned to death in their mobile home on March 29, 1963, while her husband was performing at the Grand Ole Opry . Some associates suspected that she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette. She was buried in Franklin Cemetery in Franklin, Texas. Her single “Shanty Street” was released on King Records posthumously. Columbia Records released a commemorative album entitled Original Recordings of Texas Ruby and Curly Fox: A Memorial Tribute to Texas Ruby . Texas Ruby is in the Houston Institute for Culture’s Texas Music Hall of Fame.

Tsha Handbook → · 5.2 mi away

Things to Do in Paradise

quirky 16.0 mi away
Chewbacca's Grave — May the 4th

May the 4th be with you — and with the Wookiee. Peter Mayhew the seven-foot-three British actor who brought Chewbacca to life in every Star Wars film from 1977…
quirky 12.8 mi away
Springtown Dinosaur Tracks

A family went out hunting arrowheads along Walnut Creek in 2017 and found something about 110 million years older than they expected. Pressed into the creekbed…
quirky 16.0 mi away
Chewbacca's Grave

The seven-foot-three British actor who played Chewbacca in every Star Wars film from 1977 to The Force Awakens is buried right here at Azleland Memorial Park.…
quirky 19.4 mi away
The Azle Earthquake Swarm

Starting in November 2013 the ground beneath Azle started shaking and it did not stop for 84 days. Twenty-seven earthquakes rattled windows cracked foundations…
historical 19.5 mi away
WWII Marine Glider Base at Eagle Mountain

In 1942 the United States Marines bought 2931 acres of ranchland on Eagle Mountain Lake for a purpose that sounds almost unbelievable now — training pilots to…
historical 12.7 mi away
Comanche Raids at Springtown

For twenty years the settlers of Springtown slept with one eye open. The Comanche considered this land theirs and they were not subtle about making the point.…
historical 12.7 mi away
Springtown's Civil War Frontier Collapse

When the Civil War called the Texas Rangers east to fight for the Confederacy they left behind an unguarded frontier. The Comanche knew it immediately. They…
historical 12.9 mi away
Parker County and Quanah Parker's Legacy

The county Springtown calls home carries a name tangled up in one of the most dramatic stories in Texas history. Parker County was named for Isaac Parker whose…

Sports in Paradise

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 3A Division II · Baseball · 2026

Paradise Panthers — 2026 UIL Class 3A Division II State Champions

def. Franklin 9–0 · Dell Diamond, Round Rock · June 5, 2026

In the program's first-ever trip to the state tournament, the Paradise Panthers didn't just show up — they finished it. Out in Wise County, this town of about 500 people put a baseball state championship on the map, blanking Franklin 9–0 at Dell Diamond to claim the 2026 Class 3A Division II title and cap a 36–5 season under head coach Jeremy Fatheree.

Senior right-hander Colton Walker authored the championship masterpiece, striking out nine over six scoreless innings and scattering seven hits to earn tournament MVP. The Panthers cracked the game open with a nine-run barrage across the fourth and fifth — junior second baseman Jake Ryan drove in four on a 2-for-4 day, and Cash Lander and Carter Mara each laced RBI singles in a six-run fifth that sent the entire lineup to the plate.

And nobody ran wilder all postseason: leadoff terror Camden Walker swiped 20 bases — the most of any player in Texas — while Mara (19 playoff hits) and sluggers Madden Taylor and Hogan Henderson (17 RBI apiece) kept the Panther order churning straight through the bracket.

Final
Paradise 9, Franklin 0
Record
36–5
Title
1st in program history
MVP
Colton Walker
Key Players
  • Colton Walker — Tournament MVP — 6 IP, 9 K, 7 H, 0 R in the final
  • Jake Ryan — 2B — 4 RBI, 2-for-4 in the title game
  • Camden Walker — Led all of Texas with 20 stolen bases in the playoffs
  • Carter Mara — 19 postseason hits; RBI single in the clinching fifth
The moment

Up 3–0 and pulling away, Paradise sent its whole lineup to the plate in a six-run fifth inning — Jake Ryan clearing the bases to blow the title game open.

Sources: Wise County Messenger
🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 3A · Boys Basketball · 2026

Paradise — 2026 UIL 3A Division 2 Boys Basketball State Champions

Most recent: 2026 3A Division 2

Paradise High School, nestled in Wise County, has a notable record in boys' basketball within the UIL 3A conference. The Panthers have secured one state championship, showcasing competitive spirit from this North Texas community. This achievement reflects consistent effort and a strong program foundation within Class 3A basketball.

The Paradise High School boys' basketball team claimed the 3A Division 2 state title in 2026. This championship stands as a significant milestone for the school and its athletic program, marking a period of success for the Panthers on the statewide stage.

State titles
2026
Most recent
2026
Class
3A
The moment

The Paradise Panthers boys' basketball team achieved a state championship in 2026 within the 3A Division 2 UIL conference.

Sources: UIL State Championship Archives · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Paradise

317 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Matthews, Mansell Walter · Tsha Handbook

    Mansell (Mansel, Mansil) W. Matthews, preacher, doctor, legislator, and soldier, was born in Kentucky on December 24, 1806, the son of Joseph and Penninah Matthews. He was raised and educated in Kentucky and Tennessee,…

  • First Christian Church of Paradise · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the First Christian Church of Paradise. Members held services in 'Old Town' in the late 1800s, but moved here when the railroad arrived. Merchant M. D. Cansler, school superintendent S. L. Atkins,…

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Leaders 2026: Paradise (Paradise) · 0.4 mi

    Paradise put 6 players on the statewide leaderboards of the 2026 Texas high school baseball playoffs. Camden Walker had 20 stolen bases (1st in the state), 18 hits (6th in the state), and 17 runs (4th in the state).…

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Hits 2026: Paradise (Paradise) · 0.4 mi

    Paradise, TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Carter Mara (19 hits, #3 in TX); Camden Walker (18 hits, #6 in TX); Madden Taylor (17 hits, #8 in TX); Cash Watson…

  • The Urschel Kidnapping - Shannon Ranch near Paradise · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    George 'Machine Gun' Kelly and Albert Bates kidnapped Oklahoma City oilman Charles Urschel on July 22, 1933, holding him over a week at the Shannon family ranch near Paradise, Wise County, Texas. Clues Urschel memorized…

  • Matthews, Dr. M. W. · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Dr. M. W. Matthews (December 29, 1806 - April 13, 1891) Pioneer physician and preacher. Born in Kentucky. As army surgeon in Texas Revolution (1836), treated Gen. Sam Houston at Battle of San Jacinto. Served in the 1st…

  • Ramsdale, George Lafayette · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, passing the spot where George Lafayette Ramsdale lived out his days. Born in England in 1820, Ramsdale came to Texas as a teenager, enlisting in the army by 1836 to fight for Texas…

  • Site of Old Town Paradise · 0.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Old Town Paradise, a community that literally moved! Settled in 1858 and initially called Eldorado, this town grew around a central square and a community well. It even got a post office…

  • Wise County, TX · 3.3 mi · Local history

    The rolling hills of Wise County, part of the Cross Timbers region, offered early settlers a mix of prairie and woodland, ideal for ranching and farming. Unlike the flatter plains to the west, the varied terrain…

  • Clearing the Road Ahead of the Chase · 3.5 mi

    This piece of State Highway One Fourteen, from Twelfth Street in Bridgeport to County Road Thirty Three Thirty, is the Sergeant Randy D. White Memorial Highway. Randy White served five years with the Bridgeport Police…

  • Dallas, Pacific & Southeastern Railway · 3.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, where a ghost of a railroad runs alongside you. The Dallas, Pacific & Southeastern Railway was planned way back in 1889 to connect Dallas all the way to Albuquerque. They graded a…

  • Trimble Cemetery · 4.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Trimble Cemetery, the main burial ground for the tiny community of Flatwood, also known as Davis City, in the late 1800s. Named for James W. Trimble, who bought land here in 1877, it was formally…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • Draco · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Draco, a Texas town that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Settled in the early 1880s and originally called Tylewater, it got a post office in 1883 and a new name: Draco. It boomed with…

  • New Salem Freewill Baptist Church · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the New Salem Freewill Baptist Church, organized in April 1893 by Reverend Josephus Wesley Ford and other families. Reverend Ford pastored here until his death in July 1898, and the…

  • Hunt, Col. William Hudson · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    (1815-1864) Born in Ithaca, New York, William Hudson Hunt became a principal figure in the development of Wise County. He came to Texas in 1836, joining the War for Independence. He then served in the Army of the Texas…

  • Preskitt Cemetery · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Preskitt Cemetery, established in 1886 on land originally deeded for the Lee School Community. The earliest marked grave is for infant Pearl Hobbs, who died in June 1890. The cemetery is the final…

  • Athena Strand and the Paradise Alert · 4.7 mi

    Paradise is a rural town in Wise County, near Fort Worth. On November thirtieth, two thousand twenty two, seven-year-old Athena Strand disappeared from outside her father's home there. A contract delivery driver for…

  • The Iron Horse Arrives · 4.7 mi

    Imagine this spot in 1893. Paradise had been here for twenty years already -- Bill Anderson's general store, a post office since 1876, a place folks first called Eldorado and then Paradise Prairie for the wildflowers.…

  • Engineering a Town's Future · 4.7 mi

    The Paradise you see today was fundamentally re-drawn by a 19th-century engineering project: the railroad. This was not open country before it came -- there had been a store here since the early 1870s and a post office…

  • First United Methodist Church of Bridgeport · 5.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bridgeport's First United Methodist Church. Organized in 1893, the same year the railroad arrived, the congregation started meeting under brush arbors and in the Masonic Lodge. They built…

  • Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, with headquarters at the Metro Center in the planned community of the Woodlands just north of Houston in the 1990s, was a major independent producer of natural gas,…

  • Owens, Ruby Agnes [Texas Ruby] · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Texas Ruby, country singer, was born Ruby Agnes Owens in Wise County, Texas, on June 6, 1908. She was the daughter of Curcley Sly and Susan Frances Owens. Owens was raised in a musical family. One of her brothers, Doie…

  • Crafton, TX · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Crafton is on Farm Road 2127 some two miles east of the Jack county line in northwestern Wise County. Settlement of the community began in the late 1870s after the removal of Comanche Indians from the area. A post…

  • Slidell, TX · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Slidell is on Hickory Creek twenty miles from Decatur in northeastern Wise County. The surrounding terrain, a treeless plain, is part of the Grand Prairie region of North Texas and is drained by the Elm Fork of the…

  • Greenwood, TX (Wise County) · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Greenwood is on Farm Road 1204 fourteen miles northeast of Decatur in Wise County. It was established when two cowboys camped in the area in the 1870s. The two men, named Hart and Greenwood, decided to begin a new…

  • Sherman, Shreveport and Southern Railway · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, and right here is a piece of railroad history. The Sherman, Shreveport and Southern Railway was chartered in 1893, aiming to connect McKinney all the way to Decatur, and Jefferson to…

  • Cottondale, TX · 5.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Cottondale is on Farm Road 2123 ten miles southwest of Decatur in south central Wise County. Its settlement began in the early 1850s, and it is one of the oldest communities in the county. B. F. Banks, a local…

  • East Mount Cemetery & School · 5.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past East Mount Cemetery and the former site of its school, a community named for a 19th-century lookout point. In 1876, W. C. Ellis set aside land for this public space, with the cemetery opening by…

  • First Baptist Church Bridgeport · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the First Baptist Church of Bridgeport. It started in 1882 with Reverend Alpheus Hawkins and 23 charter members in Old Town Bridgeport. After meeting in the schoolhouse and two other…

  • St. John the Baptizer Catholic Church · 5.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bridgeport, home to St. John the Baptizer Catholic Church. Established in the 1890s as a mission served by a traveling priest, it was the first Catholic church in Wise County. The original wooden…

  • Cottondale, TX · 5.8 mi · Local history

    Cottondale sits nestled in the rolling hills of Wise County, where the Eastern Cross Timbers transitions into prairie. This North Texas region is characterized by its mix of post oak and blackjack oak forests,…

  • The Bank That Rolled to the Tracks · 5.9 mi

    The Bridgeport you’re in right now is actually Version 2.0. The original town, founded in the 1860s, was about a mile southwest of here. It was doing just fine as a stagecoach stop until 1893, when the Chicago, Rock…

  • The Making of Lake Bridgeport · 5.9 mi

    The biggest landmark in the area, Lake Bridgeport, isn't natural. It's a massive feat of engineering that permanently changed this region. By the 1920s the growing city of Fort Worth desperately needed a reliable water…

  • When Coal Was King · 5.9 mi

    For a generation, the sound of Bridgeport wasn't cattle; it was the clang of mining equipment and the whistle of the coal train. Coal turned up here late in the 1800s when men drilling for water hit a vein instead, and…

  • The Butterfield Stage's River Crossing · 5.9 mi

    Before there was a town, there was a trail. The Butterfield Overland Mail, the most famous stagecoach line in American history, ran some twenty-eight hundred miles from Missouri to San Francisco between 1858 and 1861,…

  • The Engineering of Lake Bridgeport · 5.9 mi

    Lake Bridgeport is a powerful example of Depression-era civil engineering. To create it, the Tarrant County Water Control and Improvement District Number One had to tame the West Fork of the Trinity River. Work began in…

  • Bridgeport, TX · 5.9 mi

    Bridgeport's local industries have been dominated by oil, gas, and limestone. The discovery of bituminous coal in 1882 led to the formation of the Wise County Coal Company, which was a leading producer of coal for the…

  • Bridgeport Coal Mines · 5.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bridgeport, a town built on coal. Back in the late 1800s, miners digging for water stumbled upon a rich coal vein just sixty feet down. This discovery led to the formation of the Wise County Coal…

  • Bridgeport Lodge No. 587, A.F. & A.M. · 5.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bridgeport Lodge No. 587, chartered in 1884. Its original twenty-seven members were mostly local coal miners, ranchers, and businessmen. The lodge has been active in community affairs…

  • Grave of Machine Gun Kelly - Cottondale Cemetery · 6.0 mi · Historical Marker

    Somewhere in Row 11 of the Cottondale Cemetery, under a small headstone that reads George B. Kelley, 1954, lies George Machine Gun Kelly, one of the most notorious gangsters of the Prohibition era. The misspelled name…

  • "Machine Gun" Kelley · 6.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past "Machine Gun" Kelley. During the Prohibition Era, organized crime increased. Big-name gangsters like Al Capone ruled the streets while public enemies such as Bonnie and Clyde swept across the…

  • Republic of Texas' Santa Fe Expedition in Wise County · 6.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, following in the footsteps of a failed Republic of Texas expedition. In 1841, President Lamar sent 321 men on a mission to Santa Fe, hoping to expand Texas's influence. They struggled…

  • Cottondale · 6.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Cottondale. Area's oldest settlement. Platted by landowner B. F. Banks, who also gave lots for public use named, 1875, for lush growth of cotton planted by John Bridges, blacksmith, to finance a trip…

  • First Presbyterian Church of Bridgeport · 6.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bridgeport's First Presbyterian Church. The congregation officially organized in 1898, meeting in a school before completing their first building that same year. Descendants of charter…

  • The Town That Moved to Coal City · 6.3 mi

    In 1893 the railroad came, but not quite where the town was. The Rock Island line was routed through the coal fields about two miles from the old Bridgeport, so the coal company gave land for a depot and a brand-new…

  • One Rock, Two Industries · 6.3 mi

    The coal under Bridgeport is deep time made useful. It formed in the Pennsylvanian period, around three hundred million years ago, when this part of Texas cycled endlessly between swampy land and shallow sea, burying…

  • A Star in the Window, a Marker by the Road · 6.3 mi

    This road carries a Blue Star Memorial Highway designation, one of a string of them across Texas. The name comes from a family tradition. When someone in a household was serving in the armed forces, the family displayed…

  • The Toll Bridge That Named the Town · 6.4 mi

    Bridgeport is named for exactly what you would guess: a bridge. In 1860 a man named Colonel Hunt got a charter to build a span across the West Fork of the Trinity, redirecting the great Southern Overland stagecoach mail…

  • Five Hundred Miners, and the Slow End of Coal · 6.4 mi

    At its peak just after 1900, the Bridgeport coal operation employed around five hundred men, and many of them were immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries, who lived in rows of miners' cottages right…

  • Mexican Americans and Repatriation · 6.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, maybe near Bridgeport, and it's hard to imagine this place was once at the center of a massive exodus. During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican…

  • Stagecoaches and a Lake · 6.4 mi

    Bridgeport leans into its frontier roots harder than most towns. The Texas legislature officially named it the Stagecoach Capital of Texas, and the town displays a real Concord stagecoach and throws an annual…

  • Toll Bridge & Old Bridgeport · 6.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bridgeport, a town that owes its existence to a river crossing. Back in the late 1850s, the Butterfield Overland Mail needed a way across the West Fork of the Trinity. Colonel W. H. Hunt got a…

  • Bridgeport, TX · 6.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Bridgeport, a town whose very existence began with a bridge. Back in 1860, folks organized to build a span across the West Fork of the Trinity River, hoping to cash in on the Butterfield Overland…

  • Lake Bridgeport · 6.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, not far from Bridgeport. Right here is Lake Bridgeport, completed back in December of 1931. It was built as part of a massive plan to canalize the Trinity River, costing around two…

  • Drilling for Water, Striking Coal · 6.5 mi

    Bridgeport's biggest break came by accident. Sometime around 1880, workers digging a water well on the merchant Cates's property struck something far more valuable about sixty feet down: a thick seam of bituminous coal.…

  • Wise County Reunion · 6.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and you might just be passing the site of one of Texas's oldest public events! It started as informal gatherings for Confederate veterans in the 1860s and 70s. By 1881, it grew into a…

  • First Baptist Church of Decatur · 6.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Decatur's First Baptist Church. Organized in 1856, it first met in a log cabin. The church has a long history of community involvement, including working with Northwest Texas Baptist…

  • Wise County Poor Farm & Cemetery, Site of · 6.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving near Decatur, and you're passing the site of the old Wise County Poor Farm. From 1885 to 1962, this 320-acre farm was home to dependent citizens and county convicts who worked out their fines. The first…

  • Perrin Log Cabin · 6.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Perrin Log Cabin. William Perrin and his wife, Charlotte, along with two other families, left Rock Castle, Kentucky in the fall of 1853, arriving forty days later in the Peters Colony near Dallas.…

  • Wise County, TX · 7.2 mi · Local history

    Wise County, nestled in the rolling terrain of the North Texas Cross Timbers, finds its identity rooted in agriculture and community. This land, characterized by its mix of woodlands and prairie, proved ideal for…

  • cottondale, TX · 7.3 mi

    A notable event in Cottondale's history is the burial of the infamous American gangster Machine Gun Kelly in the Cottondale Cemetery. He passed away of a heart attack at Leavenworth Prison on July 17, 1954, in…

  • Anneville School · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Anneville School. This community, likely named for early settler Annie Davis, got its start when land was donated in 1883 for a school, church, and cemetery. The original school…

  • Long, Ira - Texas Ranger Captain · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Decatur area, the former stomping grounds of Texas Ranger Captain Ira Long. Born in Indiana and wounded twice fighting for the Confederacy, Long joined the Texas Rangers in 1874. He quickly rose…

  • Decatur Baptist College · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and right here is a spot with a claim to fame in higher education. In 1898, Decatur Baptist College was planned as the world's very first institution designed from the ground up as a…

  • Sand Hill Community · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Sand Hill, a place that was the heart of pioneer culture in North Texas. Folks gathered here at a good spring, right near the hill that gave this community its name. Back in 1854, the first…

  • Bishop, Absalom · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, Texas, and right here is the town of Decatur, the county seat that owes its very existence to one man: Absalom Bishop. Bishop arrived in Texas in 1852, but it was in 1855 that he…

  • Waggoner, Daniel · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, Texas, where Daniel Waggoner carved out a massive ranching empire. In the 1850s, this was a dangerous frontier, prone to Indian raids and cattle thieves. Waggoner, who moved here from…

  • Williams, Guinn Terrell, Jr. [Big Boy] · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Decatur, Texas, the hometown of Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Jr. He was born here in 1899 and headed to Hollywood in 1919, drawn by the new motion picture business. His good looks and horsemanship…

  • Wise County · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, a place that was once a vital frontier outpost. Established in 1856, this region was home to Wichita and Delaware Indians before settlers arrived. But life here wasn't always…

  • Decatur, TX · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Decatur, the county seat of Wise County. This town was established in 1856, originally named Taylorsville. But just two years later, in 1858, a state legislator changed the name to Decatur to…

  • Dallas Baptist University · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, and right here is where Decatur Baptist College got its start back in 1891. It was founded by the Northwest Texas Baptist Association, who chose Decatur for its central location and…

  • Lang, John J. · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Decatur, Texas, a town that owes much of its early financial success to a man named John J. Lang. After fighting in the Civil War, losing an eye at the Battle of Seven Pines, and even trying his…

  • Pickett, George Bibb · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, Texas, right near Decatur. Back in 1854, a man named George Bibb Pickett was drawn to this area by the promise of wide-open pastureland. He settled here, building his life and raising…

  • Terrell, Charles Vernon · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, perhaps near Decatur, where Charles Vernon Terrell got his start. Born in a log cabin in 1861, Terrell's life was a testament to Texas grit. He worked as a store clerk, drove ox…

  • Williams, Guinn Terrell · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, not far from Decatur. Right here, you're passing through the heart of land once shaped by Guinn Terrell Williams. He wasn't just a local banker and rancher; Williams rose to represent…

  • Terrell, John James · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was northeastern Wise County, near where John James Terrell was born on January 28, 1857. He grew up in Decatur after his family moved there for protection from intensified Indian conflicts.…

  • Woodruff, Henry Grady · 7.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, not far from Decatur, the hometown of Henry Grady Woodruff. He wasn't just any lawyer; Woodruff served in the Texas Legislature for over a decade. He started in the House of…

  • Paschall · 7.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the area where Robert and Molly Paschall settled way back in 1876. They bought land near Salt Creek, and by 1902, their home became the Paschall post office. It even housed the Paschall-Cottondale…

  • Episcopal Mission of the Ascension · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and look to your left for the Episcopal Mission of the Ascension. This little church, consecrated by Bishop A. C. Garrett, was built way back in 1889, facing Main Street. It earned the…

  • Butterfield Overland Stage Line · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, folks, and right here is where a legendary piece of American history blazed a trail. Imagine, if you can, semi-weekly stagecoach service connecting St. Louis all the way to San Francisco!…

  • First National Bank of Decatur · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Decatur's First National Bank, a financial pillar for over a century. Organized in 1883 by local businessmen, it was led for decades by W. T. Waggoner, a Texas legend in cattle and oil.…

  • Gose Trees · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the last remnants of a historic hedge, right here near Decatur. These aren't just any trees; these are bois d'arc, planted back in 1861. They formed a natural, spiny fortress around the log cabin of…

  • Decatur, TX · 8.3 mi

    In the midst of the Civil War, Decatur, Texas, witnessed a dark chapter in its history. In October 1862, Unionist sympathizers were arrested by Confederate troops and taken to Gainesville for trial on charges of treason…

  • Vesey, Randolph · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Decatur, and you might have just passed a legend. Randolph Vesey wasn't just a respected homeowner; he was a champion pioneer fiddler whose music filled the air at frontier forts across this county.…

  • Colonel Absalom Bishop · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, the county seat of Wise County, a town that owes a lot to Colonel Absalom Bishop. Bishop, a veteran of the Seminole War, arrived in Texas in 1852 and settled here in 1855. He was…

  • Sponsored North Texas State University · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, the birthplace of Charles Vernon Terrell. He started as a lawyer here in 1886, then served in the Texas Senate, even sponsoring the act that created North Texas State University. But…

  • Terrell, Charles Vernon · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    A leading public man in Texas, 1896-1939. Born in Wise County to early (1854) settlers. After two years at Texas A & M, read law and began practice in 1886. Served 1888-92 as Decatur City attorney; 1892-96 as county…

  • Stone Prison, Old · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Decatur, and right here is the Old Stone Prison. Built around 1859 using prison labor, this wasn't just a jail – the main part was the sheriff's home! The basement served as the jail cells, with…

  • Wise County, C.S.A. · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, the heart of Wise County, a place that saw some serious action during the Civil War. <break time="400ms"/> Even though the county voted against secession, its men were eager to fight,…

  • Captain George Stevens · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, where Captain George Stevens carved out a life on the Texas frontier. Born in Alabama in 1830, Stevens moved here in 1855 and quickly became a leader in defending settlers from Native…

  • Tilghman, S. W., House · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the S. W. Tilghman House in Decatur. Born in Tennessee, Tilghman arrived in Wise County in 1870. He married a local woman, Eliza Miller, and they had four children. Tilghman was a master builder, and…

  • Wise County Messenger · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and right here is the birthplace of a Texas newspaper that's seen it all. The Wise County Messenger started in 1880, bouncing between Paradise and Alvord before settling in Decatur in…

  • Decatur First United Methodist Church · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Decatur's oldest congregation, organized way back in 1862. Services started in a vacant store, and early members even used their home and pump organ for worship. The first sanctuary was…

  • Boyd Yellowjackets — 3A DI State Champions 2026 (def. London 9-8) · 8.4 mi

    Boyd High School (Boyd, TX — Wise County, northwest of Fort Worth) won the 2026 UIL Class 3A Division I state baseball championship, beating London (Corpus Christi) 9-8 in the final.

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Hits 2026: Boyd (Boyd) · 8.4 mi

    Boyd, TX placed on the Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF HITS leaderboard for the 2026 postseason: Keelan Clary (16 hits, #15 in TX).

  • Texas HS Baseball Playoff Leaders 2026: Boyd (Boyd) · 8.4 mi

    Boyd, TX placed on the 2026 Texas high school baseball PLAYOFF leaderboards (H=hits, HR=home runs, RBI, R=runs, SB=steals, K=strikeouts, H/IP=hits per inning): Will McIntire — 47 K (#3), .440 H/IP (#12); Lane Beacham —…

  • Texas Tourist Camp · 8.4 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    Before interstate highways and fancy hotels, there were tourist camps like this one! They offered a safe and affordable place for early automobile travelers to rest. The Texas Tourist Camp in Decatur, Texas, was built…

  • Texas Tourist Camp Complex · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the old Texas Tourist Camp Complex, a relic from the early days of road trips. Businessman E. F. Boydston bought this spot in 1927, turning a feed lot into a gas station and cabins for travelers. By…

  • Greasy Bend, Then Parkhurst, Then Boyd · 8.5 mi

    Boyd worked through two other names before it settled on this one. Farmers settled in the early 1890s in a curve of the West Fork of the Trinity, in rich bottomland where hogs were turned loose to fatten, so the place…

  • Chewbacca Lived Here · 8.5 mi

    Of all the places for a movie legend to settle down, the actor who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars films chose a quiet ranch in Boyd. Peter Mayhew, the seven-foot-two Englishman behind the famous furry character,…

  • A Pink Memorial Southeast of Boyd · 8.5 mi

    Southeast of Boyd, along a rural road in Wise County, there is a memorial rebuilt in bright pink. It stands where the search for seven-year-old Athena Strand ended. Athena disappeared from outside her father's home near…

  • Sallie Bowman's Ride for Home · 8.5 mi

    Between Boyd and Decatur, half a mile down a dirt lane off County Road forty-two twenty-seven, the Deep Creek Cemetery holds a headstone with a whole frontier story cut into it. It belongs to Sallie Bowman. Her father…

  • Boyd's Two Trips to the Top · 8.5 mi

    Boyd High School baseball has won two state championships at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. On June tenth, two thousand twenty three, the Yellowjackets beat Wall six to four there for the first state baseball…

  • Boyd, TX (Wise County) · 8.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Boyd, Texas, a town with a name that changed almost as fast as the railroad lines! Originally settled in the early 1890s and known as Greasy Bend because farmers fattened hogs here, the community…

  • From Greasy Bend, Named Twice · 8.6 mi

    The existence of Boyd is a story of farming and railroad politics. Farmers settled here in the early 1890s, in a curve of the Trinity's North Fork, and called the place Greasy Bend -- the bottomland was used to fatten…

  • The Bend in the River · 8.6 mi

    Boyd sits right in a bend of the West Fork of the Trinity River, and that bend explains a lot about the town. When a river rounds a curve, the water on the inside of the bend slows down and drops the silt it is…

  • Barbecue in Melon Country · 8.6 mi

    For its first half-century Boyd was a cotton-and-livestock town, but after the 1940s the farms here turned to a sweeter crop and the area became known as melon country. Those farm roots still flavor the place. For a…

  • Gunslinger from Boyd · 8.6 mi

    This town is where an NFL gunslinger got his start. Billy Joe Tolliver grew up right here, and his athletic talent was obvious early on at Boyd High School. He went on to become a record-setting quarterback for Texas…

  • Boyd, TX · 8.6 mi

    In 2011, the new Boyd High School was completed, which is three times the size of the former high school building. This expansion was necessary to accommodate the growing population of the town.

  • Masonic Lodge #479 · 8.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Boyd, Texas, and if you look closely, you might imagine a whole town on the move! This building, originally constructed in 1877, was the heart of Old Aurora, just two miles east of here. The ground…

  • Waggoner Mansion · 8.7 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    Imagine a time of cattle barons and sprawling Texas ranches – that's the world surrounding the Waggoner Mansion. Built in 1883 by the prominent Waggoner family, this sixteen-room mansion, also known as El Castile, was a…

  • The 'Free State of Wise' · 8.9 mi

    Standing in the heart of Texas, it's hard to imagine a time when this area was a hotbed of anti-Confederate suspicion. But few Wise County settlers owned slaves, and when the Civil War came, opinion here was badly split…

  • The Revolution Beneath Your Feet · 8.9 mi

    As you drive around Decatur, you're passing over the heart of a technological revolution that changed the global energy map. Deep beneath you lies the Barnett Shale, a layer of rock containing vast amounts of natural…

  • The Pink Granite Palace · 8.9 mi

    You can't miss the building that dominates downtown Decatur. The Wise County Courthouse, with its towering clock tower and distinctive pink granite, is the heart of the city. But it's actually the fourth courthouse to…

  • When the Cowboys Came to Town · 8.9 mi

    Picture the town square you see today in the late 1860s, with the eastern fork of the Chisholm Trail running just past the edge of town. From the late 1860s to the 1880s, Decatur lived off that trail. Drovers pushing…

  • Decatur, TX · 8.9 mi

    The town was originally named Taylorsville in honor of Zachary Taylor. However, Absalom Bishop, an early settler and member of the Texas Legislature, opposed naming the town after a Whig Party member. In 1858, he…

  • East Side Elementary School · 8.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and to your right, you might have passed the site of East Side Elementary School. In 1882, Decatur's African American community, concentrated east of the railroad tracks, established this…

  • Keeter Cemetery · 8.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Keeter Cemetery, serving this community for over a hundred years, starting in 1882. The oldest grave is Ida Mae Ryan, who lived from 1881 to 1882. Albert Lafayette Keeter, the namesake of the…

  • St. John Missionary Baptist Church · 9.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, passing the site of St. John Missionary Baptist Church. Organized in the spring of 1882 by a group of women led by Missouri Brown, this church has served the community for over a century.…

  • Sam Woody's Cabin · 9.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Decatur, and just ahead is the site of Sam Woody's Cabin. Woody, a pioneer from Tennessee, brought his family to Wise County in 1854 and built this cabin near Deep Creek. It was the very first…

  • Battle of the Knobs · 9.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Battle of the Knobs, a fierce clash that happened on November 10, 1837. A small company of eighteen Republic of Texas soldiers, led by Lt. A. B. Benthuysen, found themselves…

  • Pleasant Grove No. 2 Cemetery, School and Church · 9.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Pleasant Grove, home to one of three communities with that name in Wise County. This spot has been a center of life since the late 1870s, when the earliest graves were marked here. In 1879, a…

  • Oak Lawn Cemetery · 9.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Oak Lawn Cemetery, established in 1878 when William T. Perry deeded land for a public burial ground. However, at least one grave, Eli Lindley, dates back to 1867, and others from 1857 may have been…

  • Vesey, Randolph (Uncle Ran) · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, passing the life story of Randolph Vesey, better known as Uncle Ran. Born into slavery in Georgia around 1832, Vesey served as a body servant to Confederate General William Lewis…

  • Lake Bridgeport WWII Training Site · 10.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a vital World War II training ground! From 1942 to the war's end, Lake Bridgeport was a key bombing target area and seaplane base for the Marines. Pilots practiced everything from…

  • Deep Creek Community · 10.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through what used to be Deep Creek, settled around 1854 by folks like Sam Woody and Tom McCarroll. They farmed cotton and corn, raised cattle, and built a church that also served as a schoolhouse. But…

  • Mount Zion Baptist Church & Jonestown Cemetery · 10.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Mount Zion Baptist Church and Jonestown Cemetery. Andrew Jackson Jones deeded land here back in 1833 for the church and cemetery, with the earliest marked grave dating to that same year.…

  • Indian Captives Dot and Bianca Babb · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Chico, and we're flashing back to 1865. Imagine this: two kids, 13-year-old Dot Babb and his 9-year-old sister Bianca, playing near their home. Suddenly, a Comanche raiding party of nearly 40…

  • The Dam that Made a City · 11.0 mi

    The city of Runaway Bay exists because of an engineering project finished half a century before the town did. Fort Worth was growing fast and needed water. The Tarrant County Water Control and Improvement District…

  • The Texans Who Became the Lost Battalion · 11.1 mi

    The Lost Battalion Memorial Highway carries U.S. Highway Three Eighty through Wise and Jack Counties, and its name comes from a group of Texas soldiers in World War Two. In November nineteen forty one, the Second…

  • Oak Grove United Methodist Church · 11.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Oak Grove United Methodist Church, organized in 1878 by Reverend Jim Smith and Reverend E. C. Fullingim. Its first sanctuary was moved to this site in 1902, and the current building has been in use…

  • First Baptist Church of Chico · 11.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Chico, where the First Baptist Church was organized in 1874. Starting with just five members, the congregation met in homes and a brush arbor before building several structures over the years,…

  • The Methodist Church in Chico · 11.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Chico, where the Methodist Church was founded back in May of 1872. Robert Calvin Mount and his wife, along with three other pioneers, held their first worship service in a log schoolhouse. Over…

  • Brown Hotel · 11.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Chico, and right here is the site of the old Brown Hotel. Colonel J.T. Brown, who founded this town back in 1876, built this hotel in 1888. Now, this place saw some real history. Imagine standing…

  • Siddons-Barnes Log Cabin · 11.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Siddons-Barnes Log Cabin, a structure built in the early 1870s. This humble cabin was more than just a home; it was the very first place of worship for Methodists in the area and also served as…

  • Named by a Single Vote · 11.9 mi

    Chico, Texas, got its name by the narrowest margin imaginable. In the mid-1870s a man named J.T. Brown, who had come from Chico, California, settled here and opened a general store. When it came time to name the new…

  • The Town Built on Crushed Stone · 11.9 mi

    Drive into Chico from the south and the roadside tells you what this town does: quarry after quarry lining the highway. After oil was found nearby in the 1940s, Chico briefly called itself the oil capital of Wise…

  • Babb Cemetery · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Babb Cemetery, established September 5th, 1866. On that day, Mrs. John S. Babb was killed by Comanche Indians. Her children, Dot and Bianca, were captured and held for two years before their father…

  • Hanna-Robinson-Richey Drugstore · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Hanna-Robinson-Richey Drugstore, built in 1893 by A.V. Hanna. This native sandstone building was more than just a pharmacy; it housed Chico's first telephone switchboard, plus a doctor, a lawyer,…

  • Robert Calvin Mount · 11.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Wise County, where Robert Calvin Mount arrived in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1855</say-as>. He was elected the first assessor-collector of taxes here in <say-as interpret-as="date"…

  • Chico, TX · 11.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Chico, a town that owes its start to a man named J. T. Brown, who hailed all the way from Chico, California. He arrived in the mid-1870s, setting up a general store near Dry Creek. This little…

  • Stephens, Ira Kendrick · 11.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, maybe not far from Chico, the birthplace of Ira Kendrick Stephens. Born in 1887, Stephens overcame early health issues and taught in country schools before earning degrees from…

  • The Governor's Pardon on the Hotel Porch · 12.0 mi

    The man who founded Chico, Colonel J.T. Brown, lived a life with one very dramatic scene. A frontier figure described in his own obituary as a Mexican War veteran and pioneer Indian fighter, Brown built the Brown Hotel…

  • The Stone Drugstore Where the Phones Began · 12.0 mi

    One of Chico's oldest buildings is a sturdy little drugstore built of native sandstone in 1893, and in its early days it was practically the whole downtown under one roof. Inside that single stone building you could…

  • Waggoner Cemetery · 12.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Waggoner Cemetery, a final resting place with roots stretching back to the earliest days of settlement in Wise County. The story begins in 1849, when Reverend Henry Fullingim and his large family…

  • Aurora UFO Crash Site · 12.2 mi · Historical Marker

    Fifty years before Roswell, this tiny Wise County town made a claim so strange that people are still arguing about it. On April 17, 1897, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News, a mysterious airship crashed…

  • Aurora, TX (Wise County) · 12.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Wise County, near Aurora. Back in 1897, this quiet town became the center of a bizarre statewide sensation. A local cotton buyer, S. E. Haydon, wrote a story for the Dallas Morning News about a…

  • The Cemetery on the Hill · 12.3 mi

    The Aurora Cemetery is a real, still-used graveyard with graves dating back to the 1860s, on land a settler donated to the local Masonic lodge in 1877. It would be a quiet country cemetery like a thousand others in…

  • How Do You Test a Legend? · 12.3 mi

    Aurora's airship legend turns out to be a neat little case study in how science tests an extraordinary claim. Over the years, investigators have come at it with real tools. They swept the cemetery with metal detectors,…

  • Rhome, TX · 12.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Rhome, a town with roots stretching back to the 1850s as Prairie Point. It was once the second-largest settlement in Wise County, boasting a hotel and businesses. But the Civil War brought…

  • The Roswell of Texas · 12.4 mi

    Aurora's claim to fame is a story that's literally out of this world. On April 19, 1897, the Dallas Morning News reported that a mysterious airship had crashed two days earlier on the property of a local judge, J.S.…

  • Aurora, TX · 12.4 mi · Local history

    Aurora, Texas, stands as a quiet testament to a singular, dramatic event that etched its name into the annals of local lore. Unlike its agricultural neighbors, born from fertile land or strategic trade routes, Aurora's…

  • Aurora alien grave legend · 12.4 mi

    Fifty years before anybody said the word Roswell, a little town north of Fort Worth had already buried its alien. April of 1897 — the local newspaperman, S.E. Haydon, filed a story in the Dallas Morning News. A…

  • Engineering a Ghost Town · 12.4 mi

    Aurora died in two blows, and the first one wasn't the railroad. Late in 1888 spotted fever broke out here, and by 1889 the fear of it had emptied a town that had counted somewhere between 750 and 3,000 people, with two…

  • The Town That Almost Was · 12.4 mi

    Before the UFO story, Aurora had a much more grounded tragedy. By the mid-1880s this was a real town: two schools, two cotton gins, two hotels, fifteen businesses, and a population somewhere between seven hundred fifty…

  • New Hope Cemetery & New Hope Baptist Church · 12.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the historic New Hope Cemetery and Church. Back in 1875, pioneer settler Joseph Wren donated five acres right here for a community cemetery. That same year, the New Hope Baptist Church moved to this…

  • Hyde Cemetery · 12.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Hyde Cemetery, a resting place for early settlers. Look for the graves of Dizania and Felix Barnes, who died on the same day in 1879. This cemetery also holds many unmarked graves and serves as the…

  • The Last Ride to Walnut Creek · 12.5 mi

    On April twenty ninth, nineteen fifty seven, a carload of lawmen spotted two men near Lake Worth. One was Gene Paul Norris, an Oklahoma and Texas bandit and the brother of a onetime Public Enemy Number One. Texas Ranger…

  • Evetts, Samuel G. · 12.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Willow Point, home to Samuel G. Evetts, a Texan who fought for independence. He was wounded in December 1835, during the Siege of Bexar, a key battle in the Texas Revolution. After the war, Evetts…

  • Willow Point Cemetery · 12.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Willow Point Cemetery, which began in 1882 with the burial of Anna M. English on land later owned by Samuel G. Evitts. Evitts himself was buried here the next year. The land was eventually deeded to…

  • Springtown, TX · 12.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Springtown, Texas, a place named for the many springs that first drew Joseph Ward to this spot back in 1856. He settled here on a creek, and three years later, he designed the town square. He…

  • Hopewell Cemetery · 12.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Hopewell Cemetery, established in 1872. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010.

  • Two Dozen Springs Named a Town · 12.6 mi

    Early settlers reportedly found about twenty-five active springs in and around the Springtown area, grouped into three main clusters. That density of natural water sources was unusual enough to define the place…

  • College Hill: A Higher School on the Frontier · 12.6 mi

    In 1884, the same year Springtown incorporated as a town, it opened a college-level school. The Springtown Male and Female Institute, also known as College Hill Institute, served the educational needs of northern Parker…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Springtown (Springtown) · 12.6 mi

    Springtown (Springtown, TX) placed on the 4A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Layton Murrell (4 HR); Isaac Gonzalez (2 HR).

  • Its Own Newspaper Since 1881 · 12.6 mi

    The Springtown Sentinel began publication in 1881, just a few years after the community had established itself as a trade center. On the Texas frontier, a local newspaper was more than a convenience. It was a signal…

  • The Open-Air Tabernacle on the Square · 12.6 mi

    On Springtown's town square there was once a building with no walls. Just a roof and open sides, called a tabernacle, and it served as the community's main gathering space in the early twentieth century. Church…

  • Springtown's Natural Springs Settlement · 12.6 mi · Things to Do

    Picture a man from New Jersey standing at the edge of a creek in 1856 watching water bubble up from dozens of natural springs. Captain Joseph Ward had found…

  • Springtown: The Biggest Little Town in Texas · 12.6 mi · Things to Do

    By 1877 Springtown had a hotel two general stores two blacksmith shops and three cotton gins — not bad for a settlement in the middle of Comanche country. The…

  • The Two Blows That Emptied the Town · 12.6 mi

    The real reason Aurora faded has nothing to do with spacemen. Two ordinary disasters did it. First, around 1888, a spotted-fever epidemic, now thought to have been a form of meningitis, swept the town, and so many…

  • Dr. George and Ruth Jones House · 12.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the home of Dr. George and Ruth Jones, built in 1915. Dr. Jones, a respected physician, and Ruth, a dedicated teacher and missionary, were pillars of the Springtown community. Their two-story house,…

  • The Spaceman Buried in Aurora · 12.7 mi

    In April 1897, the Dallas Morning News ran an astonishing story out of Aurora. A local writer reported that a mystery airship had sailed over town at dawn, clipped a judge's windmill, and exploded in his yard. The…

  • Built Around a Spring · 12.7 mi

    Springtown began where a settler found reliable water. Joseph Ward settled beside a spring-fed creek in 1856, and when he laid out the town square in 1859, the settlement was called Littleton's Springs, for the springs…

  • What Made the Springs: Underground Water Science · 12.7 mi

    Springtown was not named by a railroad company or a land developer. It grew where roughly two dozen natural springs brought hidden groundwater to the surface, and the science behind those springs is hydrogeology, the…

  • Woody Creek BBQ · 12.7 mi

    Woody Creek BBQ started as a family food operation on private property beside the actual Woody Creek, on the stretch between Springtown and Weatherford. It moved into a permanent building on the Springtown square in…

  • The Frontier College · 12.7 mi

    In 1884, the same year Springtown officially incorporated, this small frontier community did something ambitious: it opened a school of its own. The Springtown Male and Female Institute took in students from across the…

  • The Highway That Remade the Town · 12.7 mi

    The road you're likely driving on right now, State Highway 199, is the single most important piece of engineering in modern Springtown. For decades, this was just a two-lane country road connecting Fort Worth to…

  • James, Jesse and Frank, Old Campsite of · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Decatur, and you might be looking for a ghost of the Old West. This area, and much of Texas, was a hideout for some of America's most notorious outlaws. Think Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger, and…

  • Comanche Raids at Springtown · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    For twenty years the settlers of Springtown slept with one eye open. The Comanche considered this land theirs and they were not subtle about making the point.…

  • Springtown's Civil War Frontier Collapse · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    When the Civil War called the Texas Rangers east to fight for the Confederacy they left behind an unguarded frontier. The Comanche knew it immediately. They…

  • A Full Trade Center by 1877 · 12.7 mi

    Springtown had no railroad in 1877. No rail connection, no shipping depot, none of the infrastructure that usually built Texas towns in this era. And yet by that year it had a hotel, a school, two general stores, two…

  • Howell's · 12.7 mi

    Howell's is a long-running local favorite in Springtown, the kind of place Parker County regulars know and visitors discover. A reliable stop for a sit-down meal in a small town with limited restaurant options.

  • Springtown, TX · 12.7 mi

    Springtown's history began with Joseph Ward, an early settler who named the community Littleton's Springs. In the mid-1870s, the name was changed to Springtown. The town's post office opened in 1875, and Springtown was…

  • Renshaw, Dr. William · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Decatur, where Dr. William Renshaw became the very first doctor to permanently settle in Wise County. Born in Illinois and practicing in Tennessee, he first came to Texas in 1853 to claim a land…

  • Springtown: Educational Capital of Northwest Texas · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    For one strange glorious decade a tiny frontier town became the smartest place in Northwest Texas. Starting in 1884 the Springtown Male and Female Institute…

  • The Springtown Tabernacle · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    In the depths of the Great Depression when most towns could barely keep the lights on Springtown got a gift that would outlast generations. In 1936 young men…

  • Springtown's Oil Boom Schools · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    Nobody expected what came bubbling out of the ground beneath Springtown's school district. When oil was discovered on school land the money changed everything…

  • Springtown Wild West Festival · 12.7 mi · Things to Do

    Every third Saturday in September for more than 35 years the town square in Springtown transforms into something straight out of 1885. A parade rolls down the…

  • Eureka Lodge No. 371, A.F. & A.M. · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising past the Eureka Masonic Lodge in Springtown, a building that's been a cornerstone of this town since 1897. Imagine this: the Masons met upstairs, while downstairs, this very building housed all sorts of…

  • City of Springtown · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Springtown, a place born from water. Captain Joseph Ward settled here in 1856, drawn by abundant springs. He laid out the town square in 1859, initially naming it Littleton's Springs. The town got…

  • Springtown Dinosaur Tracks · 12.8 mi · Things to Do

    A family went out hunting arrowheads along Walnut Creek in 2017 and found something about 110 million years older than they expected. Pressed into the creekbed…

  • Aurora Cemetery · 12.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Aurora Cemetery, a place with more stories than you might expect. The oldest graves here go back to the 1860s, belonging to the Randall and Rowlett families. But this 3-acre plot was officially…

  • Bledsoe, George Lawton · 12.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Aurora, and right here, you're passing the final resting place of George Lawton Bledsoe. Born in Georgia in 1805, Bledsoe came to Texas in 1834, just in time to fight for its independence. He was…

  • Mount, R.C., House · 12.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the R.C. Mount House, a testament to early Texas grit and resourcefulness. Mount, a surveyor, preacher, and the first tax assessor-collector for Wise County, started building this home in 1872. He…

  • Named for the Goddess of Dawn · 12.8 mi

    Long before the airship story, Aurora got its name from something hopeful. Settlers arrived in the late 1850s, and the man credited with naming the place chose Aurora, after the Roman goddess of the dawn, by one account…

  • Springtown Tabernacle on the Square · 12.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Springtown, and right here on the Square is a place that's been the heart of this community since the 1930s: the Springtown Tabernacle. It started with a building in 1906 that housed city hall and…

  • Parker County and Quanah Parker's Legacy · 12.9 mi · Things to Do

    The county Springtown calls home carries a name tangled up in one of the most dramatic stories in Texas history. Parker County was named for Isaac Parker whose…

  • Stevens, Captain George · 12.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Flat Rock, Texas, a place that remembers Captain George Stevens. He arrived here in 1855, a man known as the champion of the defenseless. Stevens was deeply involved in protecting pioneer families…

  • Teague Cemetery · 12.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Aurora, and just off the road is the Teague Cemetery. It's named for John Teague, who came here from Missouri in 1858 with his family. He fought in the War with Mexico and served on the frontier…

  • Flat Rock Cemetery · 12.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Flat Rock Cemetery, a place that began with a tradition of unmarked graves. Settled in the 1850s by pioneers like Moses Ball, the earliest burials here are said to be an unknown Native…

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