Sanger, Texas

Born in Germany in 1834, Jacob Frederick Elsasser migrated to this country with his father and brothers. They operated a cigar factory in Chicago until it was destroyed in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Elsasser moved…

You're driving through Sanger, and right here is the home of William E. Partlow, the city's very first mayor. Partlow was a Virginian who actually surrendered with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. After the Civil War, he…

Sanger originated in 1886 at mile post 392.16 as a water stop along the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Route leading north from Fort Worth to Purcell, Indian territory (now Oklahoma). The stop’s proximity to…

Just east of Sanger lies a massive feat of engineering that reshaped this entire region: Lake Ray Roberts. Before the 1980s, this was all rolling prairie and bottomland forest along the Trinity River's Elm Fork. But as…

Sanger, Texas, has seen significant growth over the decades. In 1980, the population was 2,574, marking a 60.6% increase since 1970. By 1990, the population had risen to 3,508, and by 2010, it reached 6,916. The 2020…

You're driving past the site of the Sanger Stock Farm, established in 1899 by Noah C. Batis. Batis arrived in Texas as a young man and spent his early years working as a cowboy, driving cattle up the famous Chisholm…

Sanger, on Interstate Highway 35 ten miles north of Denton in north central Denton County, was founded in 1886 as a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad. Cattle from the ranches of north Denton County had been driven up the…

You're driving past Bolivar Cemetery, a burial ground that's served Sanger since at least 1863. It started as a simple plot laid out by Dr. Hiram Daily in 1852, but grew to include victims of major influenza epidemics…

Named indirectly for Simon Bolivar, South American statesman, general and patriot. It might have been called "New Prospect," but for a mug of rum. When town was founded in 1852, a man who had settled here from Bolivar,…

You're driving past Gribble Springs Baptist Church, established in 1871 by 23 members from the Pond Creek community. The Rev. W.C. West was its first pastor. The congregation met in a schoolhouse before building their…

You're driving past Sanger, where John Simpson Chisum once built his home. From 1856 to 1862, this was the base for a man who would become known as the 'cattle king' of Texas. Chisum was born in 1824 and died in 1884,…

You're driving through what used to be Toll Town, named for the two roads that crossed here. But a schoolteacher, Henry Clay Wilmoth, thought it needed a better name, so he suggested Green Valley. The post office opened…

You're driving past Tyson Cemetery, a final resting place for a Denton County family. The earliest known burial here is J.P. Newton, who arrived from Tennessee and died in 1856. Just a few years later, young Charles…

Krum is on Farm Road 1173 seven miles northwest of Denton in west central Denton County. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway ran a line through western Denton County in the mid-1880s. At that time the company bought…

You're driving through Sanger, Denton County, where the Forester Ranch has been a cornerstone of this area for over a century. William Forester arrived from Tennessee in the early 1850s, setting up his ranch around…

Valley View is on Spring Creek at the intersection of Interstate Highway 35, Farm Road 922, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway ten miles south of Gainesville in southern Cooke County. The site of the…

You're driving past Krum, a town that started as the Jackson community back in 1876. But Krum really took off in 1886 when the railroad came through. They named the town after Charles K. Krum, a railroad official. Soon,…

You're driving through Upshur County, near Gilmer, and you're passing through the community of Valley View. Settled by formerly enslaved African American families around 1880, this wasn't just a place to live; it was a…

You're driving through Denton County, right on the path of the legendary Chisholm Trail! After the Civil War, this trail became a lifeline, driving millions of cattle from Texas to Kansas markets. From 1867 to 1884,…

You're driving past the Elm Fork Bridge, a relic from the Roaring Twenties. Built in 1922, it was the longest bridge in Denton County at 250 feet, a marvel of iron and steel designed for two-way automobile traffic.…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of a place that changed North Texas farming forever: Agricultural Experiment Station Number 6. Established in 1910, this station wasn't just about growing crops;…

You're driving through Valley View, a town that started as a dream on a tall grass prairie. In 1870, Captain L.W. Lee and his wife Mary Ann left Missouri for this spot, and soon friends joined them. By 1872, they…

You're driving past the site of Denton's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. This mission started around 1890, with services held in a local barn! They finally built their first church in 1893, though it was replaced…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the home of the North Texas State Fair and Rodeo! It all kicked off way back on October 15th, 1885, as the Denton County Blooded Stock and Fair. For decades, it…

You're driving past the Woodrum-Boyd House, a beautiful Tudor Revival home built in 1932 for E.N. and Comette Woodrum. It was later owned by Judge Benjamin Wade Boyd and his wife Ila Mae, who called it 'Boyd's Nest.'…

The green space you see just southeast of Denton's downtown square, now called Quakertown Park, holds the ghost of a neighborhood. From the 1870s until the early 1920s, this was a prosperous African American community…

A huge part of Denton's identity comes from the University of North Texas, and specifically, its College of Music. In 1947, this school did something revolutionary: it approved Gene Hall's proposal for a degree in…

While the university provides the musicians, the city itself provides the stage. Denton, often called 'Little D,' is famous for its fiercely independent and creative music scene. It’s a culture built around small,…

Deep beneath Denton lies the Barnett Shale, a geological formation rich with natural gas. In the early 2000s, a technology called hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' unlocked this gas, leading to a drilling boom.…

Denton's history is deeply rooted in Texas' early days. The city and county were both named after John B. Denton, a pioneer and militia captain who was killed in a skirmish with the Kichai people in 1841. Denton County…

You're driving through Denton, and right here, you're passing a beautiful piece of Texas history. Back in the 1930s, a committee of sharp women at Texas State College for Women – that’s Texas Woman’s University today –…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of the First Christian Church. This congregation got its start way back in 1868, led by Elder Terrell Jasper. They met in the Masonic Hall at first, then put up…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. It started way back in 1858, organized by just twelve people in the old log courthouse. For its first decade, the congregation…

On the north side of Denton sits a campus founded on a then-radical idea: a state college built specifically to educate women. The Texas legislature authorized it in 1901, a commission chose Denton as the site in 1902,…

You're driving through Denton County, past the site of Plainview Cemetery. This burial ground served early settlers, including the Gideon and William Kimbrough families who arrived from Tennessee around 1878. The…

You're driving past the first building of what is now Texas Woman's University in Denton. Created in 1901, this school was the only university in the United States founded expressly for women. Denton won the bid to host…

This highway is part of the Purple Heart Trail, a symbolic trail that runs through all fifty states to honor those killed or wounded in combat while serving in the armed forces. In Texas it started with one road. In two…

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…

You're driving past the site of the old Cooper Creek School. While families settled this area even before the Civil War, this community school officially organized in 1876, serving 39 students in a one-room building.…

You're driving past Cooper Creek Cemetery, a final resting place that's kept a unique history alive for over a century. Settlers arrived here in the 1860s, and by 1878, this land was formally established as a community…

You're driving past the marker for the Pioneer Woman, a tribute to the women who settled this land. Imagine them, forging ahead into a pathless wilderness, their courage unswerving. They met every new challenge with…

You're driving past the Cooper Creek Baptist Church, a spiritual home for this community for over a hundred years. Baptists first met here as early as 1872, and a new sanctuary was built in 1917. Today's members include…

On May 25, 2024, both Valley View and the city of Pilot Point were struck by an intense EF3 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale. The tornado resulted in 7 deaths, 100 injuries, and extensive damage throughout both…

The devastating tornado that struck Valley View on May 25, 2024, was a textbook example of severe weather science in North Texas. This region is a battleground for massive air masses. On that day, warm, moist air from…

You're driving through Denton right now, home to a world-changing musical first. Back in 1947, North Texas State Teachers College, now the University of North Texas, did something no other university had ever done: it…

You're driving through Denton, home of the legendary One O'Clock Lab Band. Right here, back in 1959, Leon Breeden took over the jazz program at North Texas State College. He transformed it from a simple 'dance-band'…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, the hometown of Ann Sheridan, the "Oomph Girl" of the 1940s. Born Clara Lou Sheridan in 1915, she got her start right here, attending North Texas State Teachers College. Her sister…

Joseph Louis Atkins, African-American civil rights activist, educator, and businessman, was born in Jefferson, Texas, on March 6, 1936. He was the son of Willie and Mable Atkins. His family moved to Dallas in 1950, and…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, the hometown of Kearie Lee Berry, a man whose life spanned incredible military service and athletic achievement. Born in 1893, Berry was a star athlete at the University of Texas,…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, a place that became home to a pioneering photographer, Carlotta Corpron. Arriving in 1935 to teach at Texas State College for Women, she began experimenting with her camera, not…

You're driving through Denton, and right here in Quakertown Park, a massive celebration of music and art unfolds every spring. It started in 1980 as the 'Spring Fling,' and by 1985, jazz had its own dedicated festival.…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, the birthplace of Edward Walter Eberle, a man who shaped the modern U.S. Navy. Born in 1864, Eberle graduated from the Naval Academy in 1885 and spent nearly fifty years innovating…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, the birthplace of Herschel Evans, a jazz saxophone legend. Born in 1909, Evans learned his craft in the legendary jam sessions of Kansas City, eventually switching to tenor sax at…

You're driving through North Texas, maybe near Denton, where architect O'Neil Ford got his start. He never finished college, but that didn't stop him. He learned by doing, working with Dallas architect David R. Williams…

You're driving through Texas, maybe near Houston, and you're passing by the legacy of Charles Inge Francis. Born in Denton in 1893, Francis wasn't just a lawyer; he was a player in Texas's booming oil and gas industry.…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, home to the stunning Little Chapel in the Woods. This architectural masterpiece wasn't built by professionals alone. Students, faculty, and even members of the National Youth…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, a town that owes much of its African American community's development to Frederick Douglas Moore. Born right here in 1875, Moore was a self-taught scholar, a talented musician who…

You're driving through Denton, home of a flour mill that put Texas on the map! It started in 1886 as a farmers' cooperative, the Farmers' Alliance Milling Company. They hoped to be like successful co-ops in the Midwest.…

You're driving through Denton, home to Texas Woman's University. Did you know this school started because of a huge push from women's groups like the Grange and the WCTU? They wanted a place where young women could get…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, a town that owes a lot to Otis G. Welch. He arrived here in 1852, a lawyer from Maine who'd graduated from Yale. Welch wasn't just any lawyer; he helped lay out this very city and…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, and right here, in what is now the heart of the city, you're passing through the former site of Quakertown. This vibrant African-American community began forming in the mid-1870s,…

Louis Herman Hubbard, teacher and college president, the son of Gorham Eustis and Louise (Mansanto) Hubbard, was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, on February 10, 1882. His father, who was United States consul to Puerto…

You're driving through Denton, a town that owes much of its early development to men like Dr. James P. Blount. Born in Mississippi in 1849, Blount moved to Denton as a boy and became a pillar of the community. He wasn't…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, a place that owes its very layout to Joseph Alexander Carroll. Born in Missouri in 1832, Carroll arrived in Denton County in 1853. He wasn't just a lawyer and judge; he was also a…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, home to a vibrant celebration of music! Right here, the Denton Blues Festival transforms Quakertown Park every September into a hub for blues lovers and aspiring musicians. It…

You're driving near Denton, and right here, Denton Field played a crucial role in training pilots for World War II. From 1940 to 1945, this was the North Texas base for the Civilian Aeronautics Authority's…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is where a newspaper shaped the town's identity for over a century. Back in 1882, the Denton Chronicle started, and by 1899, it merged with another paper to become the…

You're driving through Denton, where William Cunningham Edwards made his mark on local history. In 1899, he took two struggling newspapers, the Chronicle and the County Record, and merged them into the weekly Record and…

You're driving through Denton, a city that became a hub for experimental music thanks to Merrill Ellis. Born in Cleburne in 1916, Ellis came to North Texas State University in 1962 and immediately started pushing…

You're driving through Denton, a town that became the heart of North Texas journalism thanks to Charles W. Geers. After fighting in the Civil War and traveling the South, Geers landed here in 1868. He partnered up and…

You're driving through Denton, the hometown of Fitzhugh Francisco Hill, a lawyer and state representative who served twelve years in the Texas House. Hill was known for his fiery oratory and his tenacity, once described…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, the hometown of George Milton Hopkins, Sr. He wasn't just any local lawyer; Hopkins served Denton County and surrounding areas in the Texas Legislature for years. Back in 1915, he…

You're driving through Denton, a town that was home to Jerome Claiborne Kearby, a man who lived a truly Texas life. He enlisted as a fifteen-year-old "boy soldier" in the Civil War, rising to the rank of major by the…

You're driving through Denton, a city that owes a lot to Alvin Clark Owsley. He arrived here in 1873, starting as a public school teacher. But Owsley wasn't just a teacher; he was a driving force behind education and…

You're driving through Denton, a town that was once home to Alvin Mansfield Owsley. Born here in 1888, Owsley was a lawyer, a decorated WWI veteran, and even served as the national commander of the American Legion. But…

You're driving through Denton, a town that owes a lot to John B. Schmitz. He arrived here in 1878, a young businessman from Illinois. Schmitz didn't just settle in; he dove headfirst into building this community. He…

You're driving through Denton, a town that owes its start to education. Back in 1890, this was a quiet farming community. Joshua Chilton opened Texas Normal College and Teachers' Training Institute, hoping to train…

You're driving through Denton, home to a remarkable archive: The Woman's Collection at Texas Woman's University. Established back in 1932, it's one of the largest and oldest collections dedicated to women's history in…

You're driving through Denton, a city that owes its very existence to a desire for a central county seat. Back in 1857, residents wanted a courthouse right in the middle of Denton County. So, three men donated 100…

You're driving through Denton, a city that owes a bit of its educational history to Charles C. Bell. Bell, a farmer and businessman, served two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, representing this very county…

You're driving near Denton, Texas, home to a state school for the intellectually disabled. Back in 1957, the city really wanted this facility. The Denton Chamber of Commerce led a massive campaign, and in just 34 days,…

You're driving through Denton, Texas, home of Fred Minor, a lawyer who reached the pinnacle of Texas politics. After graduating first in his class from the University of Texas law school in 1916, Minor practiced law…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of the former Selwyn School. It started back in 1955 as the Denton Civic Boys Choir School. By 1957, it was reorganized and renamed Denton Preparatory School.…

You're driving through North Texas, maybe near Dallas, and right here, Doris Whiteside Baker was making her mark. She grew up in Denton, graduated from North Texas State Teachers College, and by World War II, she was…

You're driving past Ford, O'Neil. (December 3, 1905 – July 20, 1982) 	In the mid-20th century, a North Texas native became a leading architect of the American Southwest. O’Neil Ford was born in Pink…

You're driving through Denton, and just ahead is the Simmons-Maxwell House, built in 1915. It's a beautiful example of Arts and Crafts Mission Style architecture, designed with an open floor plan, stucco walls, and…

You're driving past the Evers House, a grand Neoclassical home built in 1903 for Robert and Mary Evers. It was designed by Austin architects C.H. Page, Jr. & Bro. and built by local builder Frank Craft. Originally…

You're driving past the Mounts House, built in 1898 by Robert Noble Mounts and his wife Nannie. Robert's family was instrumental in Denton's early development, with his mother establishing the first Sunday School and…

You're driving through Denton, passing the site of the Mounts-Wright House. The Mounts family were early settlers here in the 1850s, contributing to Denton's growth through farming and land ownership. Though the…

You're driving past Lipscomb-Doggett House. The Lipscomb-Doggett House was built by Dr. Priestly Lipscomb (1869-1942) and wife, Molly Binyon (1871-1942). The couple contracted the one-story frame house from J.C.…

27 formerly enslaved families walked in from the White Rock area of Dallas in 1875 and settled two miles south of the town square, building their own log cabins from timber they cut themselves. They called it Freedman…

You're driving through Denton, past the site of what was once Quakertown, a vibrant African American community that thrived here in the early 1880s. It was a self-supporting neighborhood with homes, churches,…

You're driving past the site of a true Texas pioneer in women's sports and education. Beulah Harriss arrived in Denton in 1914, becoming the very first women's physical education teacher at North Texas State Normal…

You're driving through Denton, passing the historic Christal House. Born in 1859, Jim Christal overcame his father's mysterious death and a cowboy career cut short by injury. He then built a fortune in farming, milling,…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is a house that tells a story of changing tastes in Texas architecture. Built in 1885 by grocer Robert Scripture, the original section was pure Victorian. But look at it…

You're driving past the birthplace of a major Texas university! Back in 1890, Joshua Chilton opened his Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute in downtown Denton. The very next year, the city built this…

You're driving past the Martin-Russell House, a grand Georgian Revival home built between 1925 and 1927. It cost thirty thousand dollars back then for Dr. M.L. Martin and his wife Ailsey, who inherited part of a famous…

You're driving past the site of Denton's 1927 City Hall. Designed in the popular Spanish Renaissance style, this white brick building featured arched windows and a tiled roof. It even housed the fire station in its…

You're driving past the home of James Newton and Eva Tabor Rayzor, built in 1909. James Rayzor was a prominent Denton businessman, involved in ventures like the Alliance Mill and the ice company. He also helped found…

You're driving past the Rayzor-Graham House in Denton. Built in 1912 by local builder M.T. Goodwin for business leader J. Fred Rayzor, this home showcases classic American Foursquare architecture with charming bungalow…

Long before he reinvented American music, Sylvester Stewart was a Denton baby. Born here on March 15, 1943, the boy the world would know as Sly Stone spent his earliest years in a deeply religious family tied to the…

Before the world knew him as a Von Erich, he was David Adkisson, a kid from the Denton area who hunted and fished on the family ranch with his brothers. He starred in basketball and football at Lake Dallas High, earned…

On the southeast corner of the Denton County Courthouse lawn sits a small grave that took sixty years and three burials to fill. When John B. Denton was killed at Village Creek in 1841, the retreating militia buried him…

Denton can claim something no other town can: the place where jazz first became a college major. In 1947, the school now called the University of North Texas launched the world's first degree program in jazz studies, an…

The pink-and-tan castle anchoring the Denton town square is the 1896 Denton County Courthouse, and it's stitched together from stone hauled in from across the state. Architect W.C. Dodson, who designed a string of Texas…

You're driving through Denton, where Edna Westbrook Trigg blazed a trail for women in agriculture. In 1915, she became Texas's first county home demonstration agent, teaching farm women vital skills like gardening,…

The town and county you're in carry the name of a man who never lived to see either. John B. Denton was born in Tennessee in 1806, orphaned young, and became a self-taught Methodist circuit preacher before he took up…

After dark, the 1896 courthouse on the square stops being a museum and starts being a ghost story. The building's basement once held jail cells, and people who've been down there describe odd noises and the unshakable…

You're driving past the Denton County Courthouse, a grand structure built between 1896 and 1897. This is the fifth courthouse for the county, with earlier ones located in Alton and Pinckneyville. The third courthouse,…

You're driving past the namesake of Denton, Texas! John B. Denton arrived here in January of 1836, a Methodist circuit rider. He served as a preacher, a lawyer, and a soldier. Tragically, Denton was killed in the…

You're driving through Denton, and right here, way back in 1890, a brand new college kicked off classes on the second floor of a hardware store. Imagine that! Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute opened…

You're driving through Denton, a city named for John B. Denton, a minister who died defending frontier settlers. The area was first settled in the 1840s, and by 1856, this spot was chosen as the county seat. Imagine…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of the Lacy Hotel. Charles Christian Lacy, who helped plat this town back in 1855, opened what's believed to be Denton's first hotel on this spot. It stood from…

On the Denton square at 117 West Hickory Street, Beth Marie's Old Fashioned Ice Cream has been scooping since 1999, back when the square wasn't the busy destination it is now. Beth Marie and Randy Cox opened the shop…

You're driving through Denton County, carved out of Fannin County way back in 1846. It was organized with Denton as its seat, named for John B. Denton, a preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter who died in 1841. The first…

You're driving past the oldest building on the North Texas campus, built way back in 1912. It started life as a library and gym, but by 1925, it was home to a fascinating museum. History professor Joseph Lyman Kingsbury…

You're driving through Denton, and right here is the site of the First Methodist Church, organized way back in 1857. That's the same year the town of Denton itself was formed! Services started in the log courthouse,…

In the fall of 1954, a shy kid from Wink, Texas, enrolled at North Texas State College in Denton to major in geology. His name was Roy Orbison, and the rocks didn't take. His stay was brief enough that he never made the…

Before he was keeping time and singing lead for the Eagles, Don Henley was a college kid in Denton. A native of Linden in far East Texas, Henley came west to attend what was then North Texas State University around…

You're driving past the site of Denton's first African Methodist Episcopal Church, Saint James AME. In 1875, Black pioneers from Dallas settled here, calling their new home Freedman Town. They started with prayer…

You're driving past Oakwood Cemetery in Denton, established way back in 1857, not long after this town became the county seat. The land was donated by Hiram Cisco, who also helped lay out the town. The very first burial…

You're driving past the I.O.O.F. Cemetery in Denton, a resting place with roots stretching back to 1859. That's the year Denton Lodge No. 82 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was chartered, including John S.…

You're driving through Denton County, where a vast ranch once stretched across the landscape. Darius Gregg, who fought in the Texas War for Independence, came here in 1827. By the 1850s, he’d amassed nearly 20,000…

You're driving through Denton, and we're passing the site of a community that no longer exists. Quakertown was a vibrant African American neighborhood, founded in the mid-1880s. But in 1922, the city decided to buy up…

The Trooper Hollis S. Lacy Memorial Highway covers U.S. Highway Three Seventy Seven inside the Denton city limits. Hollis Stephen Lacy began his career with the Texas Department of Public Safety on January tenth,…

You're driving past Gainesville, and right here is the site of Cooke County's very first school, organized way back in 1847! It started in a pioneer woman's home, then moved to a log cabin. By 1884, it joined the public…

You're driving through Denton County, and right here, beneath the waters of Lake Lewisville, lies a site that sparked a national controversy. Back in 1951, during construction for the lake, scientists found something…

You're driving through Denton County, the namesake of a man who lived a wild life. John Bunyan Denton started as an orphan, then a river deckhand, and even an itinerant preacher. But in Texas, he found his calling in…

You're driving through North Texas, a land Peter Harmonson helped settle. He came here in 1850, part of Peters Colony, accepting a land grant in what is now Denton County. As one of the first settlers, Harmonson helped…

You're driving past the Thomason-Scott House in Era. Built in 1894, this Victorian home was once the residence and office of Dr. Benjamin Richard Thomason, one of the town's first doctors. His son, Robert Ewing…

Elizabethtown was on the north side of Elizabeth Creek, from which the town derived its name, in the southwest corner of the Shamblen survey, fifteen miles southwest of Denton in Denton County. The first settlers there,…

Ebenezer (Abe) Hanna, historian in Sibley's Brigade during the Civil War , was born in Washington County, Arkansas, on December 13, 1844, the son of Jesse Pearce (Pierce) and Elizabeth (Williams) Hanna. The family moved…

You're driving through what used to be Bolivar, a Texas community founded in 1859. Originally called New Prospect by a Methodist minister and doctor, it was renamed Bolivar in 1861. A local farmer, who'd moved from…

You're driving through Era, a town that sprung up in the 1870s in a fertile farming region. Merchant J. N. Gist platted the townsite, and by 1881, a post office was established. It was named for a young girl, Era…

You're driving through North Texas, an area that saw action during the Civil War. Right here, Robert H. Donald served as a sergeant in Colonel James G. Bourland's Border Regiment. He saw action along the northern Texas…

Denton County covers 911 square miles in north central Texas. Its center point is at 33°12' north latitude and 97°13' west longitude. It borders Dallas and Tarrant counties on the south and Cooke and Grayson counties on…

Good Hope was on Doe Branch at the intersection of Good Hope Road and Prosper Road, between Farm Road 1385 and the Collin county line fifteen miles east of Denton in eastern Denton County. The original settlers, from…

Green Valley is north of Farm Road 428 about eight miles from Denton in northeastern Denton County. The townsite is in a valley between the Elm Fork of the Trinity River to the east and Clear Creek to the southwest.…

You're driving through what used to be the Willa Walla Valley, near Valley View. Just a day and night, January 5th and 6th of 1868, saw a brutal Kiowa raid. Led by Chief Big Tree, over 150 warriors swept through here,…

A 1884 iron bridge outside Denton haunted by the ghost of a murdered goat farmer.

You're driving past Aubrey, where a church has a story of resilience. It all started back in 1858, when Dr. George T. Key settled here and used his log cabin as both a school and one of the first Methodist churches in…

You're driving past the site of the First Christian Church of Aubrey. Organized in October 1894 by elders R. C. Horn and E. B. Holmes, the congregation's first frame sanctuary was destroyed by a tornado in 1918. Members…

There is a single thread connecting Aubrey's two claims to fame, peanuts and horses, and it runs underground. The town sits in the Eastern Cross Timbers, where the soil is a deep, light, sandy loam that drains quickly.…

Aubrey calls itself the heart of horse country, and it earned the title. As the peanut farms sold off, ranchers turned the sandy land into one of the densest concentrations of cutting-horse breeding operations in…

Aubrey almost ended up with a very different name. The settlement was first called Onega, a name nobody much liked. When the railroad built a section house here and a post office was chartered in 1881, the townsfolk…

For its first decades Aubrey was cotton country, with three cotton gins running. Then in the 1920s and 30s a tiny enemy arrived, the boll weevil, a beetle that devastated cotton across Texas, and prices collapsed on top…

Aubrey never forgot the crop that saved it. Every October, the town throws a Peanut Festival down its old Main Street, a salute to the peanut and the farmers who grew it after the cotton failed. It has run for around…

The most important day on the Tira calendar isn't a national holiday; it's the first Sunday of every July. That's the day of the Tira Homecoming. On that day, the population of this quiet community swells as cars pull…

The landscape around Tira is the result of a deliberate, decades-long swap. For a century this was cotton country — by 1930 more than two-thirds of the improved acreage in Hopkins County was in cotton. Then the…

Tira has been two towns under two names. It started as Chapman Arm, for Jimmy Chapman, who settled here in 1850; a Methodist church went up right after the Civil War. When the post office came in 1898 the name changed…

Texas State Highway 19 is a vital transportation artery that runs through the western part of Tira, connecting the town to important regional centers. Heading north on this highway, one can reach Paris, a significant…

You're driving past the Belew Cemetery, a place with roots stretching back to 1856. That's when Richard and Mary Jane Belew, along with 39 other families, journeyed here from Tennessee. They settled in an area that…

As you explore the roads branching off the main highway, you’ll enter the heart of Aubrey’s identity: 'Horse Country, USA.' This isn't just a nickname; it's a massive, world-renowned industry. The area is home to…

The main reason Aubrey answers to 'Horse Country, U.S.A.' isn't just culture — it's soil science. The town sits near a geological seam. Much of North Texas is Blackland Prairie, heavy dense clay that bakes hard as rock…

Aubrey was officially founded in 1867 by Civil War veteran Lemuel Noah Edwards, who built the second frame house in the area and eventually gave each of his 10 children a lot to build homes on. Edwards and his family…

Before Aubrey was famous for its horses, it was famous for something much smaller: peanuts. The first ones went in the ground here in the 1920s, when cotton prices collapsed and the sandy soil turned out to suit a…

You're driving through Denton County, not far from Aubrey, Texas. Right here is where James Madison Coffey met his end. A farmer, a teacher, and a legislator, Coffey served in the 39th Texas Legislature in 1925. But his…

You're driving through North Texas, and right near here, in what's now Denton County, a fellow named Stephen Augustus Venters arrived in 1846. He started out working for the Peters Colony land office, but that got messy…

You're driving through Aubrey, Texas, a town with a name that almost wasn't! Back in 1881, this spot was called Onega by the railroad workers who built a section house here. But the name wasn't popular, so they drew a…

Just north of Krugerville lies a massive feat of engineering that reshaped this entire region: Lake Ray Roberts. Before the 1980s, the land there was just the floodplain of the Trinity River's Elm Fork. But to control…

Krugerville is a young town with an old-fashioned reason for existing. In 1964 a developer named L. H. Kruger bought three hundred twenty-eight acres of mostly wooded land along U.S. Highway 377, just south of Aubrey,…

Ryan High School (Denton, TX): Most recent: 59-14 over Cedar Park · 2020 5A Division 1 final.

The sprawling factory at 1700 Woodbrook Street is where a lot of America's eighteen-wheelers are born. Peterbilt, founded in California back in 1939, opened a Denton plant in August 1980 with about 80 workers building a…

You're driving through what used to be wild Texas wilderness, right here near Slidell. Back in the 1850s, A. H. Fortenberry, known as Sevier, moved his family from Arkansas to this untamed land. He farmed, raised stock,…

Pilot Point did not spring from a single founder so much as a chain of hands. The land under the square was granted to the heirs of Charles Smith on March 13, 1841, before the town existed. More than a decade later, on…

On the north side of the square at 110 West Main, the Pilot Point Coffee House pours espresso inside one of the oldest commercial buildings in town. The structure dates to 1873 and started life as the Star Drug Store, a…

You're driving past Pilot Point, a town that owes its name to a tall timber landmark that guided travelers. Settlers were drawn here in the late 1840s by fertile land and abundant water. It quickly became a key stop on…

You're driving past Pilot Point, where a congregation organized way back in 1865. Twenty years after the Peters Colony settlers arrived, these folks got together to worship. In 1874, deacons bought this very site, and…

The grand stone building at 100 North Washington is the most photographed corner in town, and for good reason. The Farmers and Merchants Bank went up in 1896 in showy Richardsonian Romanesque style, the only true…

The hill your wheels are climbing is the whole reason this town exists. Long before there were streets, the highest rise around was crowned by a grove of oaks with one tall cottonwood standing dead center, and that lone…

Most people drive past the modest spot two blocks west of U.S. 377 without knowing a global denomination traces its birth to this ground. In October 1908 delegates from two holiness movements gathered here for what…

Friday nights are serious business in Pilot Point, and one man is the reason. G.A. Moore Jr. took over a Bearcats program that had gone 1-9 the season before he returned in 1977, and he turned it into a powerhouse.…

The high-dollar foals being raised around Pilot Point are quietly products of some serious reproductive biology. Top reining and show mares are too valuable to spend a year pregnant when they could be winning, so…

May 15, 1896 was one of the worst days for tornadoes in North Texas history, and it started right here. The first storm of the outbreak dropped an F3 tornado that tore from southwest of Justin in Denton County east…

For its first quarter century Pilot Point was a wagon town, hauling its cotton out over rutted dirt. That changed in the autumn of 1880, when the first train rolled through on the brand-new line of the Texas and Pacific…

Look past the square in almost any direction and the land turns into white-fenced pasture dotted with horses. The rolling country northeast of Denton, with its mix of prairie and Cross Timbers grass, turned out to be…

Before he was a familiar voice on CBS golf broadcasts, Colt Knost was just a Pilot Point kid swinging a club. He grew up here and won a Texas state high school golf championship in 2003, then went on to Southern…

The squat native-stone building at 211 West Liberty is one of the oldest structures in Pilot Point, and it remembers a rougher town. Built before 1880 from the same local stone as the area's earliest masonry, the Old…

If you are walking the south side of the square, stop at 101 South Jefferson and look closely at the front of the old Martin General Store. The brick building went up around 1890, when Pilot Point was a busy…

You're driving past the heart of Pilot Point, Denton County, where a local institution has been serving up news for over a century. Back in 1878, David Moffitt and James Jones launched the 'Pilot Point Post.' This paper…

You're driving through Denton County, near Pilot Point, where William Addison Kendall made his home. Kendall wasn't just a farmer; he was a state legislator who served multiple terms in the Texas House. But his most…

You're driving through Denton County, past Pilot Point. This community got its name from a tall ridge, a landmark for Native Americans and early settlers alike. But life here wasn't always peaceful. In 1860, Pilot Point…

You're driving through Slidell, a community named for a Confederate diplomat caught up in a Civil War scandal. The post office opened in 1884, and soon after, Garrett Fletcher donated land for a church and cemetery. He…

You're driving through Pilot Point, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Denton County started right here in 1878. Three other papers had already failed in this town, but David Moffitt and James Jones launched…

The forerunner of the Pilot Point Post-Signal , the oldest continuously published newspaper in Denton County, was established in 1878 in Pilot Point, Texas. Pilot Point was a poor prospect for a newspaper because three…

You're driving through North Texas, and right here in Pilot Point, a significant moment in American religious history happened. In 1908, this town became the official birthplace of the Church of the Nazarene. It was…

You're driving through Grayson County, near Pilot Point, where Willis Holford made his mark. Born in Tennessee in 1820, Holford moved his family to Texas before the Civil War. By 1860, he owned thirteen slaves. When war…

You're driving through Pilot Point, heading past the County Line Baptist Church. This congregation has been a spiritual leader for African Americans in this area since 1863, starting under a brush arbor before building…