There's a squat beige brick building in an industrial park in Garland, northeast of Dallas, that had been open all of three months when Willie Nelson walked in during January of 1975. It had the first twenty-four track console in Texas, and the lead engineer, Phil York, offered Willie a free day. He took five. What came out was "Red Headed Stranger" — songs running from twenty-five-second interludes to five-minute pieces. Willie had just signed to Columbia for a sixty-thousand-dollar advance, and when the label heard it, they figured he'd handed them a demo. It wasn't. "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" off that record became his first number one as a singer. The room's called Audio Dallas now, and it's barely changed since.

RoadyGoat → · 3.8 mi away

Red Headed Stranger 50th anniversary event, downtown Garland RoadyGoat

Fifty years after Willie Nelson cut "Red Headed Stranger" in a Garland studio, the city finally threw the record the party it never got. Here's the kicker: when organizer Jeff Ryan started calling around, he found that locals — even working musicians — had no idea the album was made in their own town. So they fixed that. Two days, one time only. Ray Benson, Rhett Miller, Joshua Ray Walker, and Max and Heather Stalling played the whole album live, backed by a pickup crew they called The Band of Strangers. They rolled in Willie's actual tour bus for photos, screened the old film with Morgan Fairchild on the panel, and the state stamped Garland an official Music Friendly City. Half a century late — but Garland finally said the quiet part out loud. This one's ours.

RoadyGoat → · 3.8 mi away

Red Headed Stranger' by Willie Nelson, recorded at Autumn Sound in Garland RoadyGoat

Everybody wants to give Willie Nelson's outlaw masterpiece to Nashville, or to Austin. Truth is, "Red Headed Stranger" got cut in Garland, Texas — a Dallas suburb — at a room called Autumn Sound. Five days. Four thousand dollars. Willie and his wife Connie dreamed up the whole story on a drive home from Colorado: a preacher on the run after he guns down his cheating wife and her lover. His sister Bobbie played the saloon piano, plain and haunted. When Columbia heard the tapes, they figured it was a rough demo — too bare, too quiet to sell. Then "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" went to number one, Willie's first ever. Turns out the label just didn't know what stripped-down courage sounded like.

RoadyGoat → · 3.8 mi away

History of Rowlett

The Day After Christmas Tornado RoadyGoat

On December 26, 2015, as families were enjoying the holiday weekend, the weather took a dark turn. A violent supercell thunderstorm spawned a tornado that touched down west of Sunnyvale and carved a thirteen-mile path northeast. At its peak it was an EF4 with winds estimated at 180 miles per hour, and that worst damage fell in Garland, near Interstate 30 and the President George Bush Turnpike, where nine of the storm's ten victims died, caught in their cars at the interchange. The twister then crossed Lake Ray Hubbard and came ashore into the eastern side of Rowlett, doing EF3 damage: homes leveled, cars tossed, the landscape changed in minutes. The aftermath was a scene of devastation, but it was also a moment of profound community strength. Before first responders could even reach every area, neighbors were already checking on each other, clearing debris, and offering shelter. The 'Rowlett Strong' movement that grew from the rubble became a powerful symbol of the city's resolve to rebuild, home by home, street by street.

RoadyGoat →

The Water That Made the Peninsulas RoadyGoat

Look at a map of Rowlett and the town seems to reach out into the water with long, finger-like peninsulas. Those fingers are the gift, and the doing, of Lake Ray Hubbard. The City of Dallas dammed the East Fork of the Trinity River and let the reservoir fill, finishing the lake around 1971. It was first called Forney Reservoir for the little town downstream, then renamed for Raymond Ellsworth Hubbard, the oilman and civic leader who ran the Dallas Park Board until his death in 1970. Dallas still owns the water through Dallas Water Utilities, even though it sits in Rowlett's backyard. When the lake rose over the old creek bottoms, it left Rowlett wrapped on three sides by water, and the town's population, barely a few thousand into the 1970s, exploded into a lakeside suburb of tens of thousands. Subdivisions like Dalrock crowd the shoreline, and marinas such as Captain's Cove put boats, ramps, and waterfront tables where cotton fields used to drain toward the Trinity. The lake didn't just border Rowlett. It reshaped it into peninsulas. (Source: Texas Water Development Board; Handbook of Texas.)

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The Night After Christmas RoadyGoat

On the night of December 26, 2015, a violent tornado tore out of the dark across the eastern Dallas suburbs. It reached EF4 strength near Garland, where it peaked around 180 mph and lifted vehicles off the elevated ramps where Interstate 30 meets the President George Bush Turnpike. Nine of the storm's ten deaths happened right there, drivers swept off the highway. The tornado then crossed Lake Ray Hubbard and came ashore in eastern Rowlett still carrying EF3 force, slamming neighborhoods near the water with little warning the day after Christmas. In Rowlett alone roughly 300 homes were destroyed and around 1,300 damaged; an elderly man died when his house collapsed around him. Across the whole path, 468 people were hurt. Whole streets lost their roofs and walls in minutes. Years later there were still empty lots where houses once stood, and the town marks the anniversary quietly. If you're driving the eastern side of Rowlett, you're moving through ground that was rebuilt, slab by slab, after one of the deadliest tornadoes the United States saw that year. (Source: National Weather Service; Wikipedia (2015 Garland tornado).)

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Duck Creek, TX

1846

Duck Creek was the name of two communities, sometimes called Old Duck Creek and New Duck Creek, located in northeastern Dallas County; their site was within the present city limits of Garland, fifteen miles northeast of downtown Dallas. The first Duck Creek, at the present junction of Garland Road and Duck Creek, had its beginning as one of the original settlements of the Peters colony . Early settlers were attracted to the area by the many springs along the creek. The first schoolhouse, a log structure built sometime after 1846, was replaced by a frame building in 1852. This second school also served as a meetingplace for the Baptist and Methodist congregations. In 1854 Duck Creek acquired a post office, which it retained until 1866. About 1868 the school was named Duck Creek Academy. Overcrowding caused the school to move into the Grange Hall at an unknown date and later into the Methodist Church. In 1880 a new one-room school was built on the site of the old school. The Masonic and Grange Hall was moved to the school and added onto it as a new wing. Permission to establish a Duck Creek Masonic lodge was granted on September 19, 1873, and a charter was issued on June 7, 1875. In 1874 a store was established on the west bank of the creek, and in 1876 a corn mill was built. Duck Creek acquired a post office again in 1877. By 1884 the community had a district school, three churches, two gristmills, three steam cotton gins, and three general stores. Its population of 100 included three physicians, two teachers, one carpenter and a carpenter-wagonmaker, one blacksmith, and one shoemaker. Two years later the town acquired a patent roller flour mill, which was built on the east side of the creek. The largest business in Duck Creek is said to have been the Grange store, known as the Duck Creek Co-operative Association, which closed in March 1887. In 1886, first the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and then the Dallas and Greenville railroad bypassed Duck Creek. The Santa Fe built a depot about a mile to the east, while the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (which acquired the Dallas and Greenville later in 1886) established a depot less than a mile to the north. Both railroads bought land from William A. Tinsley and laid out towns adjacent to their depots. The community established by the Santa Fe was named Embree, after Kelley H. Embree, a physician, storekeeper, and Duck Creek postmaster. The community laid out by the MK&T took the name Duck Creek, and was also known as New Duck Creek. Thereafter, residents of Old Duck Creek moved to one or the other of the new communities. Sometime in 1886 or early 1887 the Duck Creek Rustler moved and became reincarnated as the Embree Enterprise . On February 1, 1887, the Duck Creek post office was moved to the Santa Fe depot at Embree. The site of New Duck Creek is in Garland south of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (later the Missouri Pacific) tracks and north of State Street. After the (Old) Duck Creek Rustler moved to Embree, John H. Cullum moved to Duck Creek at the urging of Thomas F. Nash, manager of the Grange store, and established the Duck Creek News , whose first issue appeared on April 8, 1887. Duck Creek remained a shipping point for area farmers. By late October 1887 it had shipped about 2,000 bales of cotton for the season and still had "a large quantity" on hand. New Duck Creek and Embree engaged in an intense rivalry, with several attempts made by one town to take over the other. In April 1887, one or more Duck Creek partisans had a map recorded that gave the whole area the name of Duck Creek. The two towns also obtained injunctions to prevent each other from incorporating. In spite of this, Embree was incorporated on November 12, 1887. Two weeks earlier, on October 29, Congressman Joseph Abbott , who was traveling to Washington for the opening of Congress, stopped at Duck Creek at the request of local residents to look at the situation. Shortly afterward he succeeded in having the post offi

Tsha Handbook → · 3.9 mi away

Garland, TX

1887

Downtown Garland is on State highways 66 and 78, fifteen miles northeast of downtown Dallas in northeastern Dallas County. Duck Creek runs through the city, and Lake Ray Hubbard lies on its eastern border. Garland got its start as a neutral location between the two rival communities of Duck Creek and Embree. One of the original settlements of the Peters Colony , Duck Creek acquired a post office in 1854. In 1886 both the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and the Dallas and Greenville railways bypassed Duck Creek. Two new communities were established near the junction of the railroads: Embree, a mile to the east of Duck Creek along the Santa Fe line, and another community named Duck Creek, a mile northeast along the Dallas and Greenville line, soon to be sold to the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway. In early 1887 much of the business district of "Old" Duck Creek was consumed by fire, and the post office was moved to Embree. Embree then set out to incorporate but was accused of illegally counting a portion of Duck Creek's population in order to meet the minimum population required for incorporation. The fight escalated into the courts. In late 1887 Congressman Joseph Abbott settled the issue by creating the town of Garland between the two cities and establishing the post office there. The new town was named for Augustus H. Garland, U. S. attorney general under Grover Cleveland. Local legend holds that the residents of Duck Creek and Embree agreed to the new name because the attorney general had never been to Texas, and nobody knew who he was. During the 1880s the town received gas lighting, and in 1888 a new high school, called Garland College, was built. By 1890 Garland had a population of 478, four churches, three gristmills, three steam cotton gins, a roller flour mill, and several hotels, in addition to other businesses. Garland was incorporated on April 21, 1891. The first mayor was M. Davis Williams, a local merchant, and the town marshal was Tobe Ethridge. The first bank, Citizens Bank, was chartered in 1895. The town had Baptist, Methodist, Christian, and Cumberland Presbyterian congregations, and by 1892 the Masons, Odd Fellows, and Knights of Honor each had a hall. In 1899 a fire destroyed twenty-eight of the thirty businesses in Garland, including the offices of the newspaper, the Garland Daily News . After the destruction of the business section, Garland rebuilt around a town square. Eventually, plank sidewalks and a fountain for watering horses were added. In 1904 the population was 819. By 1914 the community had two banks, three cotton gins, telephone and telegraph connections, three restaurants, an undertaker, and many stores, including those selling jewelry, drugs, and harness. By 1920 the population of Garland was more than 1,400. In 1915 Texas Power and Light was granted a fifty-year franchise to operate in Garland. In 1923 a group of Garland citizens bought a generator and set up a city utility, Garland Power and Light Company, which grew to be the fourth largest municipal utility in Texas. The first electric lights installed in Garland were four streetlights around the courthouse square in 1915, making it one of the few places where the "new" electricity was used. A $100,000 bond was voted in the early 1920s to finance a 2,300-foot well and an overhead storage tank so homes and businesses could have running water. Previously each house had its own well and outhouse. The first car dealerships opened in the 1920s. On May 9, 1927, a tornado destroyed much of the city and killed seventeen people, including a former mayor, S. E. Nicholson. Six years later the Nicholson Memorial Library opened in his honor. In the late 1930s the Craddock food company, which manufactured pickles, and the Byer-Rolnick hat factory, which made Resistol hats, moved to town. The pickle factory, located on West Walnut Street, was eventually demolished and replaced by Garland's main post office. Byer-Rolnick eventually became Hatco. Due to the

Tsha Handbook → · 3.9 mi away

Hill, Anita Dorcas Carraway

1977

Anita Dorcas Carraway Hill, state legislator, was born on August 13, 1928, in Chatfield, Texas, to Archie C. Carraway, a Methodist preacher, and Martha Helen (Butler) Carraway. During the Great Depression the family moved to Arkansas. Anita Carraway later returned to Texas, where she graduated from Marlin High School in 1946. She attended Texas State College for Women (later Texas Woman's University), where she earned a bachelor of arts in journalism in 1950. She was vice-president of her senior class, editor for the student paper Lass-O , and member of Theta Sigma Phi and numerous student clubs and organizations . Prior to graduating she was hired as society editor of the Garland News . By 1952 she was the educational director of the First Methodist Church of Garland, where she was a congregant for the rest of her life. On September 21, 1952, Anita Carraway married Clodius Harris Hill in Garland. Harris Hill was an executive in the Hunt Oil Company and longtime trustee of the Garland school board-the Garland Independent School District's administrative building was named after him. They had two children, Steve and Ginger. Anita Hill served for seventeen-years on the Garland school board, starting in 1972. In 1971, following her successful efforts to save the town's Indian Lake and surrounding green space from development, Hill was appointed to Garland's park board and served as its chair from 1976 to 1977. Indian Lake Park was renamed Anita C. Hill Park at Indian Lake after Hill's death in 2003. Hill worked as a legislative aide to Kenneth Vaughan, Democratic state representative for District 33-D. Following Vaughan's resignation in 1977, Hill ran in a special election to replace him. She defeated her opponent, Republican Mike McCauley, by fewer than 300 votes in a runoff. She campaigned on repealing state taxes on utilities. She was sworn into the Texas House of Representatives on August 11, 1977, during the Sixty-fifth Texas Legislature. In September she was appointed to the committees on Business and Industry and on Health and Welfare. Hill served on numerous committees and sponsored a wide variety of bills throughout her more than fifteen-year-long career as a lawmaker. In the Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh legislatures she was vice chair of the Judicial Affairs Committee; in the Sixty-eighth legislature she was vice chair of the Cultural and Historical Resources Committee; in the Seventieth and Seventy-first legislatures she chaired the House Research Organization Steering Committee; and, in her final term in office, the Seventy-second legislature, she was vice chair of the Business and Commerce Committee. Among her legislative achievements were regulations mandating child safety seats in motor vehicles and toughening safety standards for nursing homes. She also supported occupational safety regulations and the restriction of abortion access for the third trimester and opposed the repeal of "blue laws," which required certain businesses to be closed on Sundays, and the repeal of anti-gambling laws. Hill was the first female Texas legislator to switch political parties while in office. She made this change in 1979 in anticipation of Republican party gains at the local and national levels in the 1980 election, in which Ronald Reagan won the presidency. A conservative Democrat who had worked for Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964, Hill explained that her switch to the GOP was motivated by liberal shifts in the Democratic party and that "the people of my district want conservative representation." Her husband resigned as secretary of the Dallas County Democratic party to support her campaign. In 1981 Hill became embroiled in controversy when she was denied entry to a lunchtime meeting at the private Citadel Club in Austin's Driskill Hotel because of her sex. In response a group of women legislators proposed a resolution stating that no member of the House would attend functions at places that denied entry to any House member.

Tsha Handbook → · 3.9 mi away

A. J. Head Service Station

1947

The Federal Aid Road Act (1916) and the formation of the Texas Highway Department resulted in the creation of Texas Highway 1, or Bankhead Highway. The Bankhead was America's second east-to-west transcontinental highway, which went through several Texas cities, including Garland. Commercial growth and a boom of businesses along the highway boosted Garland's economy for decades.
 A.J. Head, the original owner of the A.J. Head/Humble Station, opened a filling station in 1947. It housed many businesses to serve Bankhead Highway drivers, including a tire shop, auto repair shop, bail bond office, welding shop and discount retail store. Head sold the business in 1957, coinciding with the decreased importance of the Bankhead Highway.
 Still at its original location, the station has received few significant changes over the years. Designed by Robert Otis Lagrone, the two-story brick building was built in the Streamline Moderne style, popular in the 1930s and 1940s. The style emphasized smooth surfaces, horizontal lines, and curved corners. The curved brick wall of the building and the original metal canopy illustrated important characteristics of the style. While the canopy at the front of the building was removed, the steel and horizontal lines emphasized the style's industirual aesthetic. Because of its important place on the Bankhead Highway, the A.J. Head Humble Station shows its important role in Garland's essential economic and industrial growth in the 1940s and 1950s. (2018)

Historical Marker → · 4.2 mi away

Rowlett, City of

1880

Rowlett was first known as Morris, the name given to the post office that was established here in 1880. Austin Morris served as the first postmaster. In 1889, three years after the Greenville & Dallas Railroad (later the MK&T) was built through town, the post office's name was changed to Rowlett. Although the origin of the name is not clear, it may have come from Daniel Owen Rowlett, an early Texas settler who was a surveyor for Mercer's Colony. By the turn of the century, Rowlett had two doctors, a cotton gin, three general stores, a barber shop, blacksmith shop, two churches, a depot, and the post office. Additionally, by 1912 it boasted a bank, a telephone exchange, and a two-story school building. Many more businesses, including a newspaper (the "Rowlett News"), had begun in the town by 1937. The citizens of Rowlett voted to incorporate in 1952, and growth has continued throughout the 20th century. Lake Ray Hubbard, Dallas' chief source of water, was completed in 1971 and borders Rowlett on its east, south, and west sides. The history of the northeastern Dallas County town is a good reflection of the settlement patterns in this part of the state. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Historical Marker →

Herfurth House

1908

Accompanying the agricultural boom in the late 19th century was the influx of immigrant German and Swiss farm families to the northeastern portion of Dallas County. Among the German families buying farms near Rowlett was Johann Christian Herfurth (1835-1914) and his wife, Anna Barbara Etter (1842-1925). One son, John Samuel Herfurth (1879-1958), located the Dallas County farm land and brought his parents here. The farm was purchased in 1908, originally consisted of 151 acres and included a small 3-room house on the property. Soon after obtaining the property, around 1910, Herfurth added two rooms and a hallway to the original house. A second major addition in 1918 produced the basic design of the airplane bungalow house as it exists today. The exterior of the house is a classic craftsman style with strong horizontal lines, a low pitched roof, deep eaves and small panes in the upper window sashes. There is evidence that the contractor relied on plans from Sears, Roebuck & Co. In the 1930s, nationwide research into scientific land management practices increased. J.S. Herfurth followed those developments closely and worked with Dallas County extension service agents to implement new techniques, such as contour plowing and crop rotation. He was named a local farm conservationist and awarded the honor of triple-a farmer. In addition to extensive cotton production, Herfurth was also interested in animal husbandry, particularly the breeding of horses and mules. J.S.’s youngest son, Carl Leroy Herfurth, and his wife, Helen Hall, were the last members of the family to own and occupy the Herfurth homestead.

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Rowlett

historical 16.6 mi away

The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.

historical 16.6 mi away

Dealey Plaza

On November 22 1963 President John F Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in an open Lincoln convertible and was shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas…

quirky 14.3 mi away

Big Tex at the State Fair

A fifty-five-foot cowboy named Big Tex has welcomed visitors to the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park Dallas every fall since 1952. He booms howdy folks over a…

historical 7.4 mi away

Southfork Ranch

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

quirky 10.2 mi away

Southfork Ranch

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…

spooky 11.1 mi away

Lady of White Rock Lake

Since the 1930s drivers along White Rock Lake report picking up a soaking-wet woman in a white dress. She asks for a ride home then vanishes leaving the seat…

food 15.3 mi away

Pecan Lodge

Dallas' best BBQ. The beef rib alone is worth the drive.

Everything Near Rowlett

1744 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

The Day After Christmas Tornado
On December 26, 2015, as families were enjoying the holiday weekend, the weather took a dark turn. A violent supercell thunderstorm spawned a tornado that touched down west of Sunnyvale and carved a thirteen-mile path…
The Water That Made the Peninsulas
Look at a map of Rowlett and the town seems to reach out into the water with long, finger-like peninsulas. Those fingers are the gift, and the doing, of Lake Ray Hubbard. The City of Dallas dammed the East Fork of the…
The Night After Christmas
On the night of December 26, 2015, a violent tornado tore out of the dark across the eastern Dallas suburbs. It reached EF4 strength near Garland, where it peaked around 180 mph and lifted vehicles off the elevated…
Engineering a Lakeside City
The massive body of water defining Rowlett’s eastern edge, Lake Ray Hubbard, isn’t a natural lake. It’s a remarkable piece of civil engineering. By the 1960s, the city of Dallas was growing fast and desperately needed…
Rowlett, TX
On December 26, 2015, Rowlett experienced a devastating EF4 tornado that tore a 13-mile path from neighboring cities of Sunnyvale and Garland, Texas, through the southeast portion of Rowlett. The tornado severely…
How You Rate a Wind You Never Measured
Here's a puzzle the 2015 Rowlett tornado leaves behind: nobody put an anemometer in the funnel, so how do we know it hit 180 mph? The answer is forensic engineering. The Enhanced Fujita scale, used by the National…
Named for a Man Who Never Lived Here
The town you're rolling into carries a name its namesake almost certainly never saw up close. Daniel Rowlett led a small company of Kentucky families into Texas in 1835, settling first in the Tulip Bend country along…
Rowlett, TX
The city's name, Rowlett, has a unique origin. It was derived from Rowlett Creek, which in turn was named after Daniel Rowlett, who moved from Kentucky to Bonham, Texas, in 1835. Daniel was a member of the Smoot-Rowlett…
Rails Return on the Old Katy Line
Rowlett's story began with a railroad, and in a way it came full circle on December 3, 2012. That's the day DART's Blue Line light rail opened its Downtown Rowlett station, making this town the eastern end of the entire…
One Town, Two Counties, Two School Districts
Most Texas towns sit neatly inside one county. Rowlett doesn't. The city straddles the line between Dallas County and Rockwall County, with the bulk of it on the Dallas side and a smaller eastern slice spilling over…
Rowlett, City of · Historical Marker
Rowlett was first known as Morris, the name given to the post office that was established here in 1880. Austin Morris served as the first postmaster. In 1889, three years after the Greenville & Dallas Railroad (later…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Rowlett (Rowlett) · 0.6 mi
Rowlett (Rowlett, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Jeff Claycomb (0.472 avg, 1 HR).

Show all 200 nearby places

The Town That Started as Morris · 0.8 mi
Before it was Rowlett, this place was Morris. When settlers opened the first post office here on April 5, 1880, they named it for the postmaster, Austin Morris. The name didn't stick. As the rails arrived, the community…
When the First Paved Road Came Through · 0.8 mi
For its first forty years Rowlett moved at the speed of a train. Then, in 1921, the Bankhead Highway came through, and the town learned the speed of the automobile. The Bankhead was the nation's second transcontinental…
Herfurth House · 1.2 mi · Historical Marker
Accompanying the agricultural boom in the late 19th century was the influx of immigrant German and Swiss farm families to the northeastern portion of Dallas County. Among the German families buying farms near Rowlett…
Rowlett, TX · 1.3 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Rowlett, a community named for a man who arrived in Texas way back in 1836. Dr. Daniel Rowlett moved here from Kentucky and bought a huge tract of land. A creek flowing through his property…
The Park One City Owned Inside Another · 1.5 mi
On the lakeside tract along Interstate 30 sat one of North Texas's odder real-estate stories. Elgin B. Robertson Park, 257 acres of prime shoreline on Lake Ray Hubbard, sits squarely inside Rowlett, yet for decades the…
Following the Creek That Named the Town · 1.7 mi
If you want to actually meet Rowlett Creek, the waterway this whole town is named after, you can walk a piece of it. By the early 1990s Rowlett had grown into a lakeside suburb with more than 30 miles of Lake Ray…
Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Rowlett · 2.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rowlett, a testament to the faith of Irish immigrants. Patrick McEntee, a farmer and merchant who helped build the railroad, arrived in Texas in 1874. He provided the…
Mills Cemetery · 2.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Mills Cemetery, a quiet resting place established in 1854. It began as a 1.6-acre family plot for Edward C. Mills and his family, who were among the very first settlers in this part of Dallas County,…
A 1950s Diner on the Dalrock Peninsula · 2.8 mi
Out on the Dalrock peninsula, where Rowlett's neighborhoods reach toward Lake Ray Hubbard, sits a deliberately old-fashioned stop: the Dalrock Diner at 6201 Dalrock Road. It leans hard into a 1950s diner theme, the…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Lakeview Centennial (Garland) · 3.2 mi
Lakeview Centennial (Garland, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Coleman Hedgecock (0.417 avg).
Anderson Family Cemetery · 3.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Anderson Family Cemetery, opened with the burials of William and Celia Anderson, who came here from Kentucky by way of the Missouri frontier. Their son, John Lair Anderson, a Peters Colony…
The Night the Twisters Came Up Pleasant Valley · 3.5 mi
On the night of October 20, 2019, a long line of tornadoes raked across the Dallas suburbs, and one of them clipped Sachse. The headline storm that night was a violent EF3 that tore a 15-mile gash through North Dallas…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Sachse (Sachse) · 3.6 mi
Sachse (Sachse, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Julian Moreno (0.431 avg, 2 HR).
The Day After Christmas Storm · 3.8 mi
On December 26th, 2015, the day after Christmas, the unthinkable happened. An unusually powerful, late-season tornado outbreak struck North Texas, and an EF4 twister, with winds around 180 miles per hour, carved a…
Autumn Sound Studios (now Audio Dallas) · 3.8 mi
There's a squat beige brick building in an industrial park in Garland, northeast of Dallas, that had been open all of three months when Willie Nelson walked in during January of 1975. It had the first twenty-four track…
Red Headed Stranger 50th anniversary event, downtown Garland · 3.8 mi
Fifty years after Willie Nelson cut "Red Headed Stranger" in a Garland studio, the city finally threw the record the party it never got. Here's the kicker: when organizer Jeff Ryan started calling around, he found that…
Red Headed Stranger' by Willie Nelson, recorded at Autumn Sound in Garland · 3.8 mi
Everybody wants to give Willie Nelson's outlaw masterpiece to Nashville, or to Austin. Truth is, "Red Headed Stranger" got cut in Garland, Texas — a Dallas suburb — at a room called Autumn Sound. Five days. Four…
The Hatfields of Garland · 3.8 mi
For nearly ninety years, if you wanted a real cowboy hat, chances are it came from Garland. Resistol started in Dallas in 1927 — E. R. Byer and hatmaker Harry Rolnick, the name meaning a hat that would 'resist all'…
The City That Owned the Night · 3.8 mi
During the Cold War, some of the nation’s most sensitive military technology was being developed right here in Garland. You’re driving through a city that was a quiet powerhouse in the defense industry, thanks to a…
Engineering the Night: Varo's Vision · 3.8 mi
Here in Garland, a local company essentially solved the problem of darkness. The company was Varo, and the technology was night vision. How did it work? It's a brilliant piece of physics. The scopes didn't create light;…
Garland, TX · 3.8 mi
The city of Garland was named after U.S. Attorney General Augustus Hill Garland, as a result of a dispute between two communities, Embree and Duck Creek, over which town should have the local post office. The new…
Duck Creek, TX · 3.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
Duck Creek was the name of two communities, sometimes called Old Duck Creek and New Duck Creek, located in northeastern Dallas County; their site was within the present city limits of Garland, fifteen miles northeast of…
Garland, TX · 3.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
Downtown Garland is on State highways 66 and 78, fifteen miles northeast of downtown Dallas in northeastern Dallas County. Duck Creek runs through the city, and Lake Ray Hubbard lies on its eastern border. Garland got…
Hill, Anita Dorcas Carraway · 3.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
Anita Dorcas Carraway Hill, state legislator, was born on August 13, 1928, in Chatfield, Texas, to Archie C. Carraway, a Methodist preacher, and Martha Helen (Butler) Carraway. During the Great Depression the family…
Amberton University · 3.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Garland, Texas, near the intersection of I-635 and Northwest Highway. Right here, in 1971, a college began as a branch of Abilene Christian College. It was called ACC Metrocenter, and its early…
Bethel, George Emmett · 3.9 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Garland, Texas, the birthplace of Dr. George Emmett Bethel. Born in 1894, Bethel wasn't just any doctor; he rose through the ranks to become the dean of the University of Texas medical school. He…
Garland Lodge No. 441, A.F. & A.M. · 3.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving by Garland, Texas, where the Masons have been building community for a long time. Back in 1873, the Grand Lodge of Texas gave the green light for a lodge in the pioneer town of Duck Creek, which would…
Pleasant Valley Cemetery · 3.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Pleasant Valley Cemetery, the final resting place for some of this area's earliest settlers. Back in 1848, families like the Hollands and Boydstuns arrived here from Illinois, seeking new…
A. J. Head Service Station · 4.2 mi · Historical Marker
The Federal Aid Road Act (1916) and the formation of the Texas Highway Department resulted in the creation of Texas Highway 1, or Bankhead Highway. The Bankhead was America's second east-to-west transcontinental…
The Lake That Used to Be a Town's Farmland · 4.2 mi
The wide blue water on Rockwall's western edge is younger than a lot of the people boating on it. Lake Ray Hubbard was built by damming the East Fork of the Trinity River, the same river that drew the county's first…
The Night the Tornado Crossed the Lake · 4.2 mi
On the night after Christmas in 2015, one of the deadliest tornadoes in modern North Texas history tore through the Dallas suburbs just west of here, and Rockwall County caught the tail end of it. The violent EF4 first…
The Fastest Man to Come Out of Sachse High · 4.2 mi
The Mustangs play here, and the school's most famous graduate is one of the fastest people the state of Texas has ever timed. Devin Duvernay was born in Sachse in 1997 and grew up a two-sport terror at Sachse High…
The Twenty-Foot Hat Watching Over the Square · 4.3 mi
Look up near the Downtown Square at 420 Main Street and you'll see Garland's cheekiest monument to itself: a cream-colored cowboy hat about 20 feet long, 16 feet wide, and lifted some 15 feet into the air, billed as the…
The Neon-Ringed Plaza on the Square · 4.3 mi
On the Downtown Square at 521 West State Street stands the Plaza Theatre, the most eye-catching building on the block and a survivor twice over. The site started as a 1918 hardware store that burned, and was rebuilt as…
Garland · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're cruising past the site of Garland, Texas, a town born from two struggling communities. Back in the 1840s, settlers called this area Duck Creek, and by 1846, they had a log cabin serving as their church, school,…
Bankhead Highway in Garland · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past a piece of American history right here in Garland! This section of road was once part of the Bankhead Highway, America's second transcontinental route, stretching from Washington D.C. to San Diego.…
How Garland Became the Cowboy Hat Capital of Texas · 4.4 mi
The city you're rolling through makes more cowboy hats than just about anywhere on earth, and it started with two Dallas hatmakers. In 1927, E.R. Byer and Harry Rolnick founded Byer-Rolnick and chose the name Resistol,…
The Hall of Fame Swing Born on Garland Hardpan · 4.4 mi
One of golf's all-time greats came into the world right here. Lee Buck Trevino was born in Garland on December 1, 1939, into hard poverty, raised by his mother and a grandfather who dug graves, in a small house that had…
The Night a Tornado Crossed the I-30 Interchange · 4.4 mi
On the evening of December 26, 2015, the day after Christmas, a violent EF4 tornado tore across the southeastern edge of Garland and into neighboring Rowlett. It touched down near Sunnyvale at 6:46 p.m. and stayed on…
Garland, TX · 4.4 mi
Garland's history is marked by pivotal moments that shaped its destiny. The city was born out of a rivalry between two communities, Embree and Duck Creek, which eventually merged to form Garland in 1891. A devastating…
The Materials Science Hidden Inside a Cowboy Hat · 4.4 mi
There's a surprising amount of materials engineering riding on a Garland-made cowboy hat. A fur-felt hat isn't woven or stitched from cloth; it's matted. Tiny barbed fibers of beaver and rabbit underfur are bombarded…
Fifteen Seconds at the Culwell Center · 4.4 mi
The Curtis Culwell Center in Garland is an events hall owned by the school district. On May third, two thousand fifteen, it hosted a contest of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, put on by the American Freedom Defense…
One Kick, Three Titles: Garland's Owls · 4.4 mi
Garland High's nineteen fifty six football state championship came down to one kick, and it came one year after a heartbreak at home. In the nineteen fifty five Class Three-A state final, played in Garland, the Owls led…
The 1927 Cyclone and the Library Born From It · 4.4 mi
Decades before the I-30 disaster, Garland was scarred by another twister. Early on Sunday, May 9, 1927, a powerful tornado, remembered locally as the Garland Cyclone, dropped south of town, skipped, and came down again,…
The Smiley Grave and a Legend the Cyclone Built · 4.4 mi
In the dark at Mills Cemetery, near Commerce Street and Centerville Road, sits a single headstone that has fueled one of Garland's most persistent ghost stories. The Smiley marker lists a whole family who all died on…
The Voices That Grew Up in Garland · 4.4 mi
Garland has been a launchpad for a striking number of voices. LeAnn Rimes, the country-pop prodigy who exploded onto the charts as a teenager with the song Blue and became one of the youngest artists ever to win major…
Garland's First Fallen Officer · 4.4 mi
In Garland, the corner of Saturn Road and Lexington Drive is where the city's police department lost the first officer it ever lost in the line of duty. His name was Gerald Walker. He was forty-eight years old and wore…
The Bank Window on Centerville Road · 4.4 mi
On February fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven, an employee at a Bank One branch on West Centerville Road in Garland called police about a suspicious man standing in a teller's line. Several employees had recognized him…
Bobby Boyd, Garland's Greatest Athlete · 4.4 mi
Homer Johnson worked in Garland schools for sixty-eight years, and he ranked Bobby Boyd as Garland's greatest athlete ever. At Garland High, Boyd ran, kicked, passed, returned kicks and played defensive back. He called…
Drive-In, Space-Age Twin, Then Hypermart · 4.4 mi
One spot on South Garland Avenue in Garland has had three very different lives. The Garland Road Drive-In opened there on April seventh, nineteen fifty, with searchlights, a circus calliope band wagon, and the movie Oh,…
Garland's Zombieland Zinger · 4.4 mi
Garland got a name check in a Hollywood zombie comedy, and it was not exactly a compliment. Early in the two thousand nine movie Zombieland, Jesse Eisenberg's character is at a service station running from zombies, and…
How a Water-Pump Spat Built Garland's Own Power Grid · 4.4 mi
Most of the lights in Garland answer to the city itself, and the reason traces to a fight over a single water pump. In the early 1920s the private utility serving the area wouldn't give Garland a fair commercial rate to…
Santa Fe Railroad Depot · 4.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Santa Fe Railroad Depot in Garland. Built in 1901 by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, this depot replaced an earlier one from the city's founding year of 1888. Designed by a railroad…
The Python on Apache Drive · 4.4 mi
Garland animal control got a call on a Friday night in June two thousand twenty five from a resident near Apache Drive and Broadway Boulevard. A large snake was circling the front yard. It was a fifteen-foot reticulated…
Garland Softball's Four-Year Run · 4.4 mi
Garland High softball once had a four-year run that included two state championships. The Garland team made the UIL state tournament in Class Five-A four years in a row, two thousand five through two thousand eight. It…
Five Springs of Garland Tennis Titles · 4.4 mi
For five straight springs, Garland High tennis players brought home state titles. In nineteen forty nine Rod Williams of Garland won the UIL boys singles championship in Class One-A. In nineteen fifty a Garland girl won…
Public Education in Garland · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Garland, and right here is where public education took root. It started humbly, as the Duck Creek School, soon after this community was founded in 1887. Temporary spaces served students until the…
First Presbyterian Church of Garland · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Garland, and right here you're passing the site of the First Presbyterian Church. This congregation got its start way back on April 22, 1888, when Reverend Benjamin Spencer and twenty-five members…
First Methodist Church of Garland · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Garland, and right here, you're passing the site of the First Methodist Church. This congregation started way back in 1855 with just 18 members. For years, traveling preachers rode circuits,…
First Christian Church of Garland · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Garland, a town that really took shape after the Civil War. Back in 1875, Reverend W. B. Cole organized the First Christian Church with just 21 members. They met in the local schoolhouse for…
First Baptist Church of Garland · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of Garland's first church, the First Baptist Church. Baptists were meeting in this pioneer community as early as the 1850s. Then, on March 8, 1868, sixteen members formally organized Antioch…
Travis College Hill Addition · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Garland, and right here is the Travis College Hill Addition. Back between 1910 and 1920, Garland was booming, nearly doubling its population. Plans were in the works for an interurban trolley line…
Sachse, Elizabeth McCullough Straily · 4.7 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Sachse, a town named for a pioneer woman who faced hardship and helped build this community. Elizabeth McCullough Straily Sachse arrived in Texas in 1845 as part of the Peters Colony settlers. She…
Sachse, TX · 4.7 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Sachse, a town that owes its very name to a generous land donation. It all started back in 1846 when Elizabeth Straly received a land grant. She later married William C. Sachse, a native of…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: North Garland (Garland) · 4.9 mi
North Garland (Garland, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Raul Puente (0.532 avg, 2 HR).
Loving, James and Margaret · 4.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Sunnyvale, and just off to the east is the final resting place of James and Margaret Loving. They were the sixteenth family to settle Dallas County, arriving in 1843 all the way from Kentucky in a…
Pioneer Cemetery · 4.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Pioneer Cemetery, the final resting place for many Dallas County pioneers. It began in the churchyard of Duck Creek Methodist Church, organized way back in the <say-as interpret-as="date"…
The Deal that Built the Town · 5.1 mi
The railroad tracks that cut through Sachse are the reason this town is on the map. In the 1880s, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was expanding, towns lived or died by their ability to attract a depot.…
Sachse, TX · 5.1 mi
Sachse's history began with its founder, William Sachse, a European immigrant from Herford, Prussia, who established the town in 1845. Sachse played a pivotal role in the region's development by erecting the first…
The Founder's Final Resting Place · 5.1 mi
Just off Sachse Road, surrounded by modern development, is a small, quiet cemetery that holds the origin story of this town. This is the Sachse Cemetery, the resting place of William Sachse and his family. Sachse was…
Sachse · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Sachse, a town that owes its very name to a railroad deal. Back in 1886, William Sachse donated land to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad. In return, they agreed to lay tracks, build a…
A Town That Incorporated Just to Get a Drink of Water · 5.4 mi
This unassuming spot on Fifth Street holds the reason Sachse became a city at all, and it's pure infrastructure. Lake Lavon had been built in 1948 and the North Texas Municipal Water District formed in 1951, so treated…
The Town the Railroad Misspelled · 5.4 mi
The town you're rolling into is named for a Prussian immigrant who got here first and gave up his land to get a train. William Sachse left Herford, Prussia, landed in New York in 1840, and reached North Texas in 1845,…
The First Cotton Mill in the County, Powered by Oxen · 5.4 mi
Before there was a town here, there was a mill. William Sachse built what local histories call the first combined cotton mill and gin in the county, and the power source was about as frontier as it gets: oxen and horses…
The Caboose That Became a City Office · 5.4 mi
Parked off Fifth Street sits a bright railroad caboose that has had a stranger second career than most retired rolling stock. It started as Union Pacific car number 25613, taken out of service when the railroad retired…
The History Museum Inside the Old Jail · 5.4 mi
The Sachse Historical Society Museum at 3033 6th Street has a fitting home: it's housed in the city's original jailhouse, the small lockup that once held whoever this farm town needed to hold. The society formed in…
Where the Founder Lies in the Ground He Gave Away · 5.4 mi
Off Sixth Street near State Highway 78 lies the William Sachse Cemetery, two acres the founder set aside for a church and burial ground in the 1890s, just before he needed it himself. When William Sachse died in…
185 Acres of Bottomland That Never Got Bulldozed · 5.4 mi
Right where the subdivisions thin out along Pleasant Valley Road, the pavement gives way to Muddy Creek Preserve, a 185-acre survivor of mature hardwood bottomland that the suburb grew up around instead of over. Dallas…
Chandler Cemetery · 5.4 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Chandler Cemetery, established by Kentucky natives Henry Martin and Martha Chandler. The earliest burial here was their nine-year-old daughter, Mary, in 1869. The last known burial was Martha…
William Sachse Cemetery · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the William Sachse Cemetery, a final resting place tied to the growth of North Texas. William Sachse arrived from Prussia in 1845, becoming a successful businessman and rancher. He owned over 5,000…
Sachse Cemetery · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Sachse Cemetery, established in 1899. It's recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery.
The Aircraft-Engine Plant That Became a Food Factory · 5.6 mi
The sprawling food plant off Forest Lane has a war story baked into its walls. During World War II, the Garland area hosted aircraft manufacturing, and this site ran as a Continental Motors plant turning out engines.…
First Presbyterian Church of Rockwall · 5.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the First Presbyterian Church of Rockwall. Back on November 7, 1854, twenty-three Presbyterians organized the Rockwall Cumberland Presbyterian Church, led by the Rev. John U. Vance. For thirty-three…
From Yellow Jacket to First-Round Receiver · 6.1 mi
The high school football field in Rockwall has launched more than one Friday-night hero, but Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the one currently lighting up Sundays. He grew up here and starred for the Rockwall High School Yellow…
First Baptist Church of Rockwall · 6.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the First Baptist Church of Rockwall, the oldest congregation in the Dallas Baptist Association. It all started back in 1852, even before Rockwall itself was founded. Elder John R.…
A Ranch House Older Than the Town Around It · 6.3 mi
At 1424 Barnes Bridge Road sits a home that beat the town to the prairie. David W. and Julia Savannah Florence moved over from Van Zandt County and built the first section of the Florence Ranch homestead in 1871, two…
Fine Dining in a 1920s Cottage on the Square · 6.3 mi
If you want to eat inside Rockwall's history rather than just drive past it, point yourself to Bin 303 at 316 South Goliad Street, right off the downtown square. The restaurant occupies a small craftsman-style cottage…
Florence Ranch Home · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're cruising past the Florence Ranch Home, a place that tells a story of Dallas County's ranching roots. David and Julia Florence built the first part of this house way back in 1871, right after they moved here. Back…
Named for an underground rock formation · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Rockwall County. First settled in the 1840s, this region was a part of Kaufman County until 1873, when Rockwall County was created. With an area of about one hundred forty-nine square miles, lake…
Rockwall County · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
First settled in the 1840s, this region was a part of Kaufman County until 1873, when Rockwall County was created. With an area of 147 square miles, this is the smallest of Texas' 254 counties. The county and city of…
La Prada Drive Church of Christ · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the La Prada Drive Church of Christ in Dallas. This congregation started meeting in members' homes way back in the late 1800s. By 1907, they bought land near Fair Park and used a white…
Rockwall County · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Rockwall County, formed from Kaufman County and organized on March 1st, 1873. The county was named for a peculiar geological feature: a rock wall that surfaces in several spots around here. The…
East Trinity Lodge No. 157, A.F. & A.M. · 6.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of East Trinity Lodge No. 157. A dispensation was granted in July of 1854, and the lodge charter was issued in January of 1855. Some of its early members were among the first to receive land…
The Wall Under Rockwall · 6.4 mi
You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: settlers digging in the eighteen fifties encountered a buried formation resembling a stone wall and named the town for it. Scientific…
The Mystery of the Rock Wall · 6.4 mi
The biggest story in Rockwall is the one buried right under your feet. Since 1851, people have been debating the origin of the town’s namesake rock wall. Is it a natural geological feature, or is it a man-made wall from…
Natural Sandstone or an Ancient Buried City? · 6.4 mi
Almost from the day it was uncovered, the rock wall split people into two camps, and it still does. The mainstream scientific verdict has been steady and consistent: it is a natural formation. Texas geologist Robert T.…
Three Ways to Make Rock · 6.4 mi
You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: igneous rock crystallizes from molten material, sedimentary rock forms through deposited particles or chemical and biological…
Building Without Mortar · 6.4 mi
You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: dry-stone walls depend on gravity, friction, careful fit, overlapping joints, and a broad stable base rather than mortar. Small internal…
The Lake That Made a City · 6.4 mi
The large body of water you see is Lake Ray Hubbard, and it's the single biggest reason Rockwall looks the way it does today. This isn't a natural lake; it's a massive feat of civil engineering. In the 1960s, Dallas…
The Town Named for a Wall Nobody Built · 6.4 mi
Most Texas towns are named for a founder, a railroad man, or a saint. This one is named for something the settlers dug up by accident. In 1852, as the story goes, Benjamin Boydstun, Terry Utley Wade, and William Clay…
Wall, Cliff, Ledge, or Fault? · 6.4 mi
You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: a wall is usually a constructed or wall-like steep face; a cliff is a high, very steep exposure; a bluff is a common name for a broad…
Climbing and Reading a Rock Face · 6.4 mi
You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: rock climbers rely on foot placement, balance, friction, route reading, and efficient movement at least as much as arm strength. Cracks,…
How the Earth Builds a Wall by Itself · 6.4 mi
Here is the part that turns a roadside oddity into a genuine geology lesson. The rock wall is what scientists call a clastic dike, sometimes a sandstone dike. Roughly 80 to 90 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous,…
The Smallest County in Texas · 6.4 mi
Rockwall County holds a distinction you can drive across in about twenty minutes: at about one hundred forty-nine square miles, lake water included, it is the smallest county in all of Texas. It did not start out…
Rockwall - The Buried Wall · 6.4 mi · Historical Marker
Rockwall is named after a wall — a wall nobody can quite explain. In 1851, three settlers named Boydstun, Stevenson, and Yates were digging a water well east of present-day downtown when their shovels hit stone. Not a…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Rockwall (Rockwall) · 6.4 mi
Rockwall (Rockwall, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Hudson Holt (3 HR); Dylan Cheek (3 HR).
The WPA Courthouse on the Square · 6.4 mi
The cream-colored landmark anchoring downtown Rockwall is the old county courthouse, and it carries the fingerprints of the Great Depression. Built in 1940 and 1941 as a Works Progress Administration project, it…
Captain Crash Calls Rockwall Home · 6.4 mi
Rockwall does not claim to have raised Cliff Harris, but it absolutely claims him as a neighbor. Harris, the legendary Dallas Cowboys free safety nicknamed Captain Crash for hitting like a runaway truck, has long made…
The Suburb That Kept Going Viral · 6.4 mi
For a small county seat, Rockwall has produced a surprising run of familiar faces in pop and TV music. Brothers Mitchel and Mason Musso both came up here: Mitchel became a Disney Channel actor and singer, while Mason…
From Dealers in Everything to the Feed Yard Grill · 6.4 mi
Kearney's Feed Yard, a bar and grill at 3602 North Belt Line Road, carries one of the oldest business names in town, and it's earned. A store has stood on this site since 1889, running through the decades as Ellis…
Rockwall, TX · 6.4 mi
Rockwall's history dates back to prehistoric times, with the region being occupied by Native American cultures at least 13,500 years ago. More recently, the area was home to Caddo and Creek Indians. The first…
Just 149 square miles · 6.4 mi
As you drive around Rockwall, you might not realize you’re in a place with a unique Texas distinction. Rockwall County, with the city of Rockwall as its seat, is the smallest county in the entire state by land area. It…
Barnes, Sterling Rex · 6.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Heath, Rockwall County, where Sterling Rex Barnes settled in 1846 after migrating from Mississippi. A true pioneer, he helped establish the Black Hill community, now Heath. Barnes was a charter…
First United Methodist Church of Rockwall · 6.6 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of Rockwall's First United Methodist Church. This congregation started way back in 1856, even before Rockwall County was officially formed! It began with just under twenty members meeting in…
Central National Road of the Republic of Texas · 6.7 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the path of the Central National Road, a major artery built by the Republic of Texas. Authorized in February 1844, this 30-foot-wide highway was cleared of stumps and designed to improve overland…
William and Charlotte Stone House, Stonehaven · 6.7 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the William and Charlotte Stone House, a testament to early 20th-century design. William Stone, inspired by architectural books and Frank Lloyd Wright himself, drew up the plans for this home on the…
Heath, Ephraim Charles · 6.7 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Heath, Texas, a town named for the family that settled here back in 1846. Right here, Ephraim Charles Heath, born in this very town in 1850, became a passionate prohibition leader. He was…
Heath, TX · 6.7 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Heath, Texas, a community with roots stretching back to 1846. It started as Black Hill, named for the rich soil, and was home to the very first post office in what is now Rockwall County,…
Heath Methodist Church · 6.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of Heath Methodist Church. It all started back in 1890 as Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church, South, just south of here. The congregation packed up their building and moved to Heath between…
The Town That Fought Dallas and Won · 6.9 mi
The city of Heath exists today because a handful of farmers got out ahead of the annexation maps. In the 1950s this was an unincorporated farming community out on the blackland east of the Trinity — a place that once…
The Lake That Made a City · 6.9 mi
The beautiful lake that defines Heath is not a natural feature; it’s a massive feat of civil engineering. By the 1960s, the growing city of Dallas desperately needed more water. The solution was to build a dam across…
Heath, TX · 6.9 mi
Heath's growth resumed after mid-century due to suburban expansion from nearby Rockwall and the Dallas area, as well as the development of Lake Ray Hubbard in 1969-1970. Its strategic location along Farm Road 740,…
First Baptist Church of Sunnyvale · 6.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Sunnyvale, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. Its story begins back on July 3rd, 1904, when thirteen members chartered the New Hope Baptist Church. Dr. James B. Gambrell, a…
The Town of Big Yards · 7.0 mi
For half a century, Sunnyvale had a secret weapon in its fight against urban sprawl: a simple rule. As you drive past the older homes here, notice the size of the yards. They're huge. That's not an accident; it's a…
Three Towns Become One · 7.0 mi
The town of Sunnyvale exists today because of a fear of disappearing. In the early 1950s this was a scatter of small unincorporated farming communities: New Hope, Tripp, Hattersville, and Long Creek. New Hope and Tripp…
The Highway That Built a Suburb · 7.0 mi
The road you may be driving on right now, U.S. Highway 80, is the artery that transformed Sunnyvale from a quiet farming outpost into a modern suburb. For decades, this road was part of the Dixie Overland Highway, a…
Sunnyvale, TX · 7.0 mi
Sunnyvale made national headlines on June 5, 2023, after a tragic mass shooting incident. A family of five was shot, resulting in one woman's death and four children injured. This devastating event shocked the community…
Dallas's Farm in Sunnyvale · 7.0 mi
As you drive along Highway 80, you'll pass a huge piece of land that feels like a window into the past. It's called Samuell Farm, and it has a unique story. The land belonged to Dr. W. W. Samuell, a prominent and…
The Onion Capital of the World · 7.1 mi
Imagine this town smelling of onions. For about forty years, that was the reality. Wylie sat on rich black clay and sandy bottomland that turned out near perfect for sweet white onions, and an onion shed went up…
The Man-Made Lake That Made Modern Wylie · 7.1 mi
The massive body of water just east of Wylie, Lake Lavon, isn't a natural feature. It's a work of civil engineering that reshaped this entire region. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground in January 1948 on a…
Wylie, TX · 7.1 mi
Originally known as Nickelville, the town was organized in the early 1870s. In 1886, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway laid tracks a half mile north of the original townsite, prompting businesses to move and the…
Hail Bigger Than a Softball · 7.1 mi
On April 11, 2016, the skies over Wylie turned violent. A supercell parked over the city and unloaded hail unlike anything residents had ever seen. The National Weather Service measured a stone five and a quarter inches…
New Hope, TX (Dallas County) · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through what's now Sunnyvale, but back in the late 1800s, this was New Hope. It got a real boost in 1885 when T.P. Tinsley opened his general store. The next year, the post office arrived, and Tinsley,…
Sunnyvale, TX · 7.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving east of Dallas, approaching Sunnyvale. This community didn't exist until 1953, when it was officially incorporated. But Sunnyvale wasn't just one town – it was a merger of four: New Hope, Tripp,…
The Utility Room · 7.3 mi
Betty Gore was thirty years old, a middle school teacher, and she died on the floor of the utility room of her own house on Dogwood Drive, struck forty one times with a wood splitting axe. Her baby daughter stayed in a…
The One-Acre Rule That Went to the Supreme Court · 7.4 mi
Sunnyvale's defining trait is what isn't here: subdivisions. Where neighboring suburbs sprouted dense rooftops, Sunnyvale held the line, and in 1973, after septic-tank failures plagued the area, the town locked in a…
The Night the Sky Came Down on Tripp Road · 7.4 mi
On the night of December 26, 2015, the day after Christmas, a violent tornado dropped out of the dark right here. It first touched ground near East Tripp Road just west of Sunnyvale at 6:46 p.m., then tore northeast as…
Sunnyvale, TX · 7.4 mi
Sunnyvale's history is a tapestry of change and resilience. Once inhabited by Native American tribes, it passed through Spanish rule in the 18th century, then to Mexico in 1821, and finally became part of the Republic…
The Surgeon Who Bred Texas's First TB-Free Cattle · 7.4 mi
On the open farmland straddling Sunnyvale and Mesquite sits Samuell Farm, and its story is a piece of real veterinary-science history. Dr. William Worthington Samuell was one of early Dallas's most respected surgeons.…
Southfork Ranch · 7.4 mi · Things to Do
The filming location of TV's Dallas. JR Ewing lived here.
The Town the Schoolkids Named · 7.4 mi
The town you're passing through was christened by children. Four separate farming hamlets sat out here twelve miles east of Dallas, on the old highway between Mesquite and Garland: Long Creek, New Hope, Tripp, and…
New Hope, the Boomtown That Kept Burning Down · 7.4 mi
Before there was a Sunnyvale, the busiest corner out here was New Hope, near today's Belt Line Road. It grew up around T.P. Tinsley's general store, opened about 1885, with a post office following in 1886; Tinsley and…
When Dallas Took Three Square Miles for a Lake · 7.4 mi
Look toward the water on Sunnyvale's eastern edge and you're looking at a piece of the town that legally isn't the town's anymore. In the 1960s, the city of Dallas, hunting for drinking water as it boomed, dammed the…
You Are Driving Over the Name · 7.4 mi
So the next time somebody in the car asks how Rockwall got its name, you have got the real answer, and it is better than any legend. There is no castle here, no ancient fortress, no lost city. There is a natural wall of…
The Little County the Wall Built · 7.4 mi
Here is a fun fact about the county named for that underground rock wall: Rockwall County is the smallest county in the whole state of Texas. In a state famous for going big, that is a delightful twist. The county…
Griffith, John Summerfield · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Kaufman County, maybe near Rockwall, where John Summerfield Griffith organized a company of Confederate cavalry volunteers at the start of the Civil War. He rose to lieutenant colonel in the Sixth…
Morris, John Walter · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Rockwall, Texas, the birthplace of John Walter Morris, a baseball legend who left college in 1902 to play for the Corsicana team. He spent twenty-six years in the Texas League as a player,…
Payne, Glen Weldon · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through North Texas, not far from where Glen Weldon Payne was born near Rockwall back in 1926. Growing up during the Depression, Payne's passion was Southern Gospel music. He'd hoe cotton all morning,…
Rockwall County · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Rockwall County, the smallest county in Texas. It's named for a geological oddity discovered by early settlers: a strange, subterranean rock wall. Farmers digging a well in 1851 stumbled upon it,…
Beutel, Jack Allender [Jack Buetel] · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through North Texas, and right here in Rockwall, Texas, a young Dallas man named Jack Beutel got married in 1937. But he's not remembered for his wedding day. He's remembered for a movie that almost never…
Rockwall, TX (Rockwall County) · 7.4 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Rockwall, and you might wonder how this town got its name. Well, back in 1851, settlers discovered something strange buried just beneath the surface: a stone wall! They decided to name their new…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Wylie (Wylie) · 7.5 mi
Wylie (Wylie, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Noah Smith (0.430 avg).
Tripp Baptist Church · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past Tripp Baptist Church. Pioneers arrived in this area as early as 1845, establishing small settlements that developed over time into the Tripp, Long Creek, Hatterville and New Hope communities. By…
City of Wylie · 7.7 mi · Historical Marker
You're cruising through Wylie, a town that started out as Nickelville! Pioneers first settled here in the 1850s, drawn by the Trinity River and rich Blackland Prairie soil. But the real game-changer? The railroad. In…
Berkner High School (Aqib Talib) · 7.8 mi
L.V. Berkner High School in Richardson, Texas (1600 East Spring Valley Road) is where Aqib Talib lettered in football, basketball, and track and was named the area's defensive back of the year. He became a unanimous…
The Black Cube Where Doom Was Born · 7.8 mi
Off LBJ Freeway here in Mesquite rises a stark black cube of an office building, the old Town East Tower, and inside it a few twenty-somethings rewired the entire video game industry. After founding id Software in 1991,…
Virgin Forest Hiding Beside the Freeway · 7.8 mi
At the southeast corner of US-75 and Renner Road, a few steps off one of the busiest freeways in Texas, the pavement gives way to something that almost shouldn't exist this deep in the suburbs: a stand of old-growth…
Site of Galloway Farmstead · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the Galloway Farmstead, a place that saw a family grow and adapt right here in Mesquite. Confederate veteran Benjamin Galloway and his wife Eliza arrived from Tennessee in 1872. Their son…
Breakfast on Ballard in the Heart of Old Wylie · 7.8 mi
If you want to eat where downtown Wylie actually gathers, point yourself to 112 North Ballard Avenue, where the Ballard Street Cafe and Grill has been a fixture of the historic district. It sits right on the old main…
One of the Last Weekly Oprys · 7.8 mi
You're on Ballard Avenue in downtown Wylie, at the Wylie Opry, a room that seats about two hundred fifty and still fills up some nights. George and Clara Riley started this back in the early nineteen-nineties, in the…
Highland Oaks Church of Christ · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Dallas, past the history of Highland Oaks Church of Christ. It began way back on August 6, 1855, as a Christian Church congregation formed by Dallas pioneers like John Higgs Cole and Harvey…
Wylie Cemetery · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Wylie Cemetery, established in 1889 by the Wylie Cemetery Company. It's said an indigent family's daughter was the first burial, though the earliest marked grave belongs to company president…
The Candy Montgomery Case - Wylie, Texas, 1980 · 7.9 mi
In the small town of Wylie, Texas, on a Friday the thirteenth in June of nineteen eighty, one of the most unsettling murder cases in Texas history unfolded behind a closed door. Two women — Candy Montgomery and Betty…
The Volleyball Game · 7.9 mi
Nothing about this starts in Wylie. It starts a few miles northwest, at the Methodist church in Lucas, where two young couples sang in the same choir and played on the same weekly volleyball team. Late in the summer of…
Friday the Thirteenth, Ten in the Morning · 7.9 mi
Here is the thirteenth of June, nineteen eighty, the way it looked on Candy Montgomery's calendar before anybody knew what it was. Morning: Vacation Bible School with the kids. Then errands, because Father's Day was…
What Wylie Got Left With · 7.9 mi
The verdict ended the trial. It did not end anything else. Betty Gore's father said out loud that he never accepted it. The Montgomerys divorced six years later. The house on Dogwood Drive, three bedrooms, two baths, a…
When Wylie Called Itself the Onion Capital of the World · 7.9 mi
For decades the air around these railroad tracks smelled like onions. Through the early 1960s, Wylie billed itself as the Onion Capital of the World, and a long onion shed stood beside the Santa Fe tracks downtown.…
The Day Softball-Sized Hail Set a Record Over Wylie · 7.9 mi
On the evening of April 11, 2016, a single supercell thunderstorm crawled across North Texas and unloaded on Wylie. The hail it dropped here was the size of softballs, and one stone measured 5.25 inches across, a record…
The Boy Who Died of Typhoid Still Pays for Wylie's Schools · 7.9 mi
Here's a piece of Wylie that almost nobody driving through would guess. In October 1911, Frank and Hattie Birmingham lost their son, Franklin Ovid Birmingham, to typhoid fever. Rather than let his memory fade, they took…
The Plants That Clean Wylie's Water Before the Pipes Do · 7.9 mi
Wylie is the unglamorous nerve center of how millions of North Texans get their water, and the engineering behind it is genuinely strange. The North Texas Municipal Water District runs a massive treatment plant here,…
The 1980 Case That Put Wylie in the True-Crime History Books · 7.9 mi
One of the most studied true-crime cases in Texas history happened right here in Wylie, on June 13, 1980. Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore were both churchgoing homemakers who had met through the Methodist congregation…
From Nickelville to Wylie, Sealed With Baseball Uniforms · 7.9 mi
The town you're rolling through started out with a far stranger name: Nickelville. Settlers gathered here in south-central Collin County in the early 1870s, and the place reportedly took its name from a local store,…
The Big-League Arm Born on a Farm Near Wylie · 7.9 mi
William Milton Harris, known in baseball as Bill Harris, was born June 23, 1900, on a farm just south of here near Sachse, when Wylie was a railroad town of barely 773 people. He grew into a hard-throwing right-hander…
The Voices of Old Wylie Walk Ballard Street After Dark · 7.9 mi
After the sun drops behind the old storefronts, downtown Wylie tells a different kind of story. The Wylie Historical Society runs a lantern-lit ghost tour that departs from the Brown House at 301 North Ballard, and the…
Wylie, TX · 7.9 mi
The city was named after Lt. Colonel William D. Wylie, a right-of-way agent for the railroad and a Civil War veteran. It was incorporated in 1887 along the right-of-way, the same year it was named in his honor.
The Mother's Day Tornado That Tore Through Downtown · 7.9 mi
On Mother's Day, May 9, 1993, the sky over Wylie turned violent. Around two in the afternoon, a tornado touched down just to the south near Sachse and skipped along a roughly six-mile path, ripping roofs off homes,…
Two White Lionesses Come to Wylie · 7.9 mi
Late in the evening of Tuesday, May fifth, two thousand twenty six, two white lionesses named Kali and Nzuri pulled into Wylie. The sisters, about seven years old, came from what the Animal Legal Defense Fund described…
Kylie Rae Harris of Wylie · 7.9 mi
Texas country singer Kylie Rae Harris grew up right here in Wylie, and she wrote her first song at fourteen. She released two albums, and in March of two thousand nineteen she put out a self-titled EP with a song called…
Live the Life of Riley · 7.9 mi
For most of its first century, Wylie was a sleepy farm town, and yet it has long gone by the nickname Wide Awake Wylie. As the story goes, after World War Two, when fewer than a thousand people lived here, the town shut…
First Baptist Church of Wylie · 7.9 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Wylie, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. This congregation actually started way back before 1870, meeting in homes as the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. When the town…
The Queen Anne House That Became Wylie's Front Door · 8.0 mi
At 301 North Ballard, the centerpiece of historic downtown Wylie is a tall, ornate Victorian that has been watching the town change for well over a century. The Thomas and Mattie Brown House was built in 1905 in the…
Brown, Thomas and Mattie · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the former home of William Thomas and Mattie Brown, a beautiful example of Queen Anne architecture right here in Wylie. Thomas, originally from Illinois, married Mattie in 1871. They moved to Wylie…
Brown Cottage · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Brown Cottage, one of the oldest homes in Wylie. Built in 1889, it was the first home here for businessman William Thomas Brown and his wife Martha. They moved to Wylie shortly after its founding…
Officer Richard Houston II Memorial Highway · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker
Honors Mesquite PD Officer Richard Houston II, 21-year MPD veteran, killed December 3, 2021, responding to a domestic disturbance in an Albertsons parking lot on Belt Line Rd. Honorary segment on I-635 between LaPrada…
Gallagher House · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Gallagher House, built in 1917 as a fine example of early 20th-century upper-middle-class living. Its owner, V.B. Gallagher, was a major civic leader who helped solve Dallas' water supply problem…
A Star in the Window, a Marker by the Road · 8.2 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…
Motley, Z., Cemetery · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Mesquite, and right here is the final resting place for Zachariah Motley and his family. He arrived from Kentucky in 1856 with his wife, Mary, their children, and enslaved people. They built their…
Engineering a Suburb from Scratch · 8.3 mi
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…

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