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Heath, Texas

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Music in Heath

Songs About Heath

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Artists From Heath

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Allie Gonino
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Rivers & Roads in Song near Heath

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

Interstate 20 13 songs Trinity River 11 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Sabine River 13 songs Sulphur River 2 songs

History of Heath

The Town That Fought Dallas and Won RoadyGoat

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 had cotton gins, general stores and banks, then lost most of it to a 1916 fire and to people leaving for work in Dallas. After 1950 it started growing again, pulled along as Rockwall and the Dallas-area cities crept outward. The people here valued their independence and their rural lifestyle. They did not want to wake up as somebody else's anonymous suburb. So in 1959 they took a vote and incorporated as their own city. It was a bold move to draw a line in the sand — or in this case, the blackland clay. By becoming a city, Heath got the power to control its own zoning and its own future. Lake Ray Hubbard, and the boom that came with it, wouldn't arrive for another ten years.

RoadyGoat →

The Lake That Made a City RoadyGoat

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 the East Fork of the Trinity River, right here. Engineers designed the Rockwall-Forney Dam, a barrier over two miles long and 60 feet high, to hold back the river and create a reservoir covering 22,000 acres. When the project was completed in 1968, it was called Forney Lake, later renamed Lake Ray Hubbard. This project completely reshaped the local hydrology and ecology. It also transformed Heath's destiny. The engineering that provided water for Dallas also gave Heath miles of valuable shoreline, turning a small farming town into a premier lakeside community and triggering the residential boom that continues to this day. The very ground you're on was changed forever by that single, massive infrastructure project.

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Heath, TX RoadyGoat

A notable event in Heath's history was a proposition placed on the November 4, 2008, ballot that, if passed, would have changed the name from 'City of Heath' to 'Village of Heath'. Of the 3,511 votes cast, 2,069 (58.9%) voted against the measure while 1,442 (41.1%) voted in favor, keeping the name 'City of Heath'.

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Griffith, John Summerfield

1861

John Summerfield Griffith, businessman, Confederate officer, and state legislator, was born to Michael B. and Lydia (Crabb) Griffith on June 17, 1829, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He had two brothers and three sisters. His grandfather, Capt. Samuel Griffith, took part in the battles of Germantown and Brandywine in the American Revolution. In 1839 Griffith settled with his family in San Augustine, Texas, where he was educated at home. He entered business as a clerk in a San Augustine mercantile establishment in 1850 and, using borrowed capital, established his own store the next year. In 1859 he moved to Kaufman County, where, in addition to operating a general store in Rockwall, he established himself in ranching and became one of the area's pioneer cotton farmers. With the onset of the Civil War , Griffith joined the Confederate Army as captain of a company of cavalry volunteers that he had organized in Rockwall. When the Sixth Texas Cavalry was established and his company was accepted into the regiment, Griffith was elected lieutenant colonel. He saw action against "Union Indians" at Chustenahalah in eastern Indian Territory (1861) and against Union forces at Elk Horn Tavern, Arkansas (1862), Corinth, Hatchie (Davis) Bridge, and Holly Springs, Mississippi (1862). Griffith was largely responsible for the planning and execution of the successful Holly Springs Union Depot Raid that with General Forrest’s raid in northwest Tennessee caused Ulysses S. Grant to cancel his overland campaign to rebuild his supplies and thus contributed to the temporary relief of Vicksburg and possibly lengthened the war. The campaign ruined his already weak health, however, and forced him to resign his commission. After returning to Texas, he won election to the House of Representatives of the Tenth Texas Legislature (1863–64). As the Democratic representative of District 27 (Kaufman, Henderson, and Van Zandt counties), he chaired the Committee on Military Affairs and was appointed by Governor Pendleton Murrah as brigadier general of state troops for District 2 on March 1, 1864, a position that he held until the end of the war. In 1873 he moved to Terrell, where he continued in the mercantile and livestock businesses. Additionally, he largely recouped his wartime financial losses by selling bois d'arc seeds to buyers in the North, who used the trees as windbreaks and hedges. Griffith was little involved in politics during the period of Reconstruction . In 1876, however, he was elected to represent the twenty-second legislative district (Kaufman, Rains, Van Zandt, and Wood counties) in the Fifteenth Texas Legislature (1876). He was appointed chairman of the House Committee on Public Printing, in which position he proved to be a "watchdog" of the state treasury. Griffith married Emily Simpson on December 18, 1856, and the couple raised two boys and one girl. He accumulated small fortunes both before and after the Civil War, a success reflected in public respect. In 1883 he became a member of a committee chosen by the people of Terrell to get a state psychiatric hospital located in the town. He was appointed to the board of governors when the facility opened in 1885 and retained this position until Governor James Hogg appointed a new board in 1890. Griffith died in Terrell on August 6, 1901.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.7 mi away

Morris, John Walter

1902

John Walter Morris, baseball player, promoter, and executive, was born on January 30, 1880, at Rockwall, Texas. He left the University of Texas in 1902 to play with Corsicana of the Texas League , a league in which he spent the next twenty-six years as player, manager, club executive, and, for five years, league president. He was one of the earliest collegians to leap directly into organized baseball. Headlines and records seemed to follow Morris. In his first season at Corsicana his club had baseball's highest winning percentage (.793), set a world record for consecutive victories (twenty-seven), never relieved a pitcher all season, and figured in the game's greatest slaughter-a 51-3 victory over Texarkana. All this was done with an eleven-man squad. While a student at the University of Texas, where he frequently played without shoes, Morris had been known as the "Barefoot Boy at Texas." He received a law degree from the University of Texas in 1906 and tried to combine law and baseball careers until 1910, when he decided that baseball was his life's work. In 1916 he became president of the Texas League and helped to arrange the Dixie Series, a thirty-seven-year match between the Texas League and the Southern Association champions. For several years he owned half interest in the Fort Worth Cats, and again, after 1922, he was part owner and secretary-business manager for six years of the Dallas baseball team. He also served as business manager for the Shreveport, Tyler, and Fort Worth teams. He held the following personal records: club manager in his third year of organized baseball; organizer of more leagues (fourteen) and president of more (seven) than any other man on record; at one time president of three leagues concurrently-the East Texas, Evangeline, and Cotton States; builder of nine baseball parks; developer of numerous baseball players for the major leagues, including Rogers Hornsby ; and once, in an emergency, Texas League president and umpire simultaneously. He died on August 2, 1961, of a heart attack following a surgical operation. In December 1966 he was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame .

Tsha Handbook → · 4.7 mi away

Payne, Glen Weldon

1926

Glen Weldon Payne, lead singer in Southern Gospel music , was born on October 20, 1926, near Rockwall, Texas, to cotton farmers Elmer and Vela Payne. The Paynes farmed in Munson and later Nevada, Texas. As a boy during the Great Depression , Payne’s passion was Southern Gospel music. While hoeing cotton he learned to tell time from the sun so that he could get home in time to hear the noon broadcast of the Stamps-Baxter Quartet on KRLD . The Paynes, who were Methodists, attended an interdenominational church in Munson, the only church in town. Friday and Saturday night “singin’s” were Payne’s favorite events. Southern Gospel music grew out of shape-note music created to teach musical harmony to rural churchgoers. Shape-note music publishers promoted their music books with radio broadcasts, itinerating quartets, singing conventions, and annual summer “singing schools.” Male quartets—consisting of a lead singing melody, a baritone singing harmony, and a low bass part balanced by a high tenor—dominated early Southern Gospel music. The music is positive and lively, stressing Christian themes, especially deliverance from trials of life and the joy of going home to heaven. The Stamps-Baxter Music Company of Dallas was the largest publisher of shape-note music in the South. When Payne was twelve, his grandmother wrote a letter to the company on Payne’s behalf. V. O. Stamps gave him a scholarship to attend the three-week-long Stamps Singing School in Oak Cliff, Texas. Payne, along with his father and two family friends, formed the Munson Quartet and sang “at singing conventions in small towns like Terrell, Wills Point and Royse City.” Payne attended the summer singing schools for four summers beginning in 1939 throughout high school. In 1944 the Stamps-Baxter Music Company hired Payne to sing weekday mornings with the Stamps-Baxter Quartet on KRLD, and he moved to Dallas. World War II imposed a break in Payne’s singing career. In 1945 and 1946 he was in the United States Army and served with the Eighty-sixth Blackhawk Division in the Philippines after which he went to work for the Stamps Quartet Music Company and sang baritone for the Harley Lester Stamps Quartet and Stamps All-Star Quartet. He also taught at Stamps in addition to singing. By the early 1950s he assumed the lead part in the Stamps-Ozark Quartet in Wichita Falls, Texas, and sang “every night” at schools, churches, lodges, on the courthouse lawn, or even in a cotton field. Empowered by technological advances in recording, radio , and television, Southern Gospel music achieved the height of its popularity in the post-war years. Payne recalled that “the newly invented tape format” allowed the group to pre-record their morning KWFT broadcasts and perform farther from home. They enjoyed success and even opened for acts such as Eddy Arnold and Elvis Presley . But when drought hit the Panhandle in 1956, opportunities for performances dried up, KWFT dropped the daily show, and the Stamps-Ozark Quartet disbanded. While Payne pondered what to do next, in 1957 Earl Weatherford invited him to join the Weatherfords who were singing in Rex Humbard’s mega-church in Akron, Ohio. Thousands attended Humbard’s church, the Cathedral of Tomorrow, and tens of thousands more watched on television. While living in Ohio, Payne met and married Van Lua Harris on November 30, 1957. They had two daughters and a son. In 1959 the Weatherfords recorded the album In the Garden , highly renowned as one of the outstanding albums in all of gospel music. In 1963 Weatherford left Humbard’s church to go on tour, and Payne formed the Cathedral Trio with former Weatherford members Danny Koker and Bobby Clark. The trio became the Cathedral Quartet with the addition of bass George Younce. For the next thirty-five years Payne and Younce were the core of the Cathedrals, while younger tenor and baritone members came and went. The Cathedrals left the Humbard organization in 1969 and struck out on their own. The 1970

Tsha Handbook → · 4.7 mi away

Barnes, Sterling Rex

1846

(Gravesite in Heath Cemetery) Virginia native Sterling Rex Barnes (1799-1866) migrated to this area from Mississippi with his wife Martha Ann (Mitchell) (b. 1809) and family in 1846. A pioneer settler in the community of Black Hill, now Heath, he was a charter member of East Trinity Masonic Lodge No. 157 in Rockwalll, organized in 1854. Barnes was the local justice of the peace in 1852 and operated a toll bridge at a site on the east fork of the Trinity River, now under the waters of Lake Ray Hubbard. Five sons and one son-in-law served with the Confederacy during the Civil War. (1981)

Historical Marker →

Central National Road of the Republic of Texas

1844

In an effort to improve overland transportation, the Republic of Texas Congress authorized the Central National Road in Feb. 1844. The roadway was to be 30 feet wide and cleared of stumps over 12 inches high. A survey team led by Major George W. Stell platted the route from near the mouth of Elm Fork on the Trinity River in present downtown Dallas, northeast to Kiomatia on the Red River. The highway linked a road leading south to Austin and San Antonio with a U.S. military highway extending north to St. Louis from Fort Towson in present Oklahoma. Running east from Dallas, the Central National Road turned northeast to cross the area that is now Rockwall County. Portions of FM 740, known locally as Ridge Road, follow the historic route. The earliest Rockwall County pioneers settled near the road about 1846. Sterling R. Barnes located his homestead about two miles south of the present site of Rockwall, and John O. Heath settled near the crossing of the East Fork of the Trinity River. The towns of Heath, originally named "Black Hill" and later "Willow Springs," and Rockwall, the county seat, were founded along the highway. (1977)

Historical Marker → · 4.3 mi away

Chandler Cemetery

1869

KENTUCKY NATIVES HENRY MARTIN AND MARTHA (WADE) CHANDLER WERE SETTLED HERE BY 1860 AS SOME OF THE EARLIEST ANGLO PIONEERS IN THE AREA. OF THE SEVEN MARKED GRAVES IN CHANDLER CEMETERY, SIX ARE CHANDLER FAMILY MEMBERS. THE EARLIEST BURIAL AT THIS SITE OCCURRED IN 1869, UPON THE DEATH OF THE CHANDLERS’ NINE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, MARY. THE ONLY NON-FAMILY GRAVE BELONGS TO HATTIE HARVEY, WHO WAS THE DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM C. AND LAURA F. HARVEY, NEIGHBORS FROM AN ADJACENT FARM. HENRY CHANDLER WAS BURIED AT THE SITE IN 1904 AND MARTHA WAS INTERRED IN 1908; MARTHA’S IS THE LAST KNOWN BURIAL AT THE SITE. CHANDLER CEMETERY SERVES TODAY AS A REMINDER OF THE MANY PIONEERING FAMILIES OF ROCKWALL COUNTY.

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Heath

historical 20.7 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…
historical 20.7 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
quirky 18.0 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 12.5 mi away
Southfork Ranch

The filming location of TV's Dallas. JR Ewing lived here.
spooky 15.3 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…
quirky 16.0 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…
food 19.3 mi away
Pecan Lodge

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

Sports in Heath

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 6A · Baseball · 2021

Rockwall-Heath — 2021 UIL 6A Baseball State Champions

Most recent: 2021 6A

The Rockwall-Heath High School Hawks, representing Heath, Texas, have established themselves as a formidable presence in Class 6A baseball. Their dedication and skill culminated in a significant achievement for the program, bringing state-level recognition to their community.

The Hawks proudly claimed a UIL State Championship in 2021, a testament to their consistent effort on the diamond. This success highlights the competitive spirit and athletic talent fostered within the Rockwall-Heath baseball program, making their hometown proud.

State titles
2021
Most recent
2021
Class
6A
The moment

The Rockwall-Heath Hawks secured a UIL Class 6A State Championship in 2021.

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

Everything Near Heath

1505 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Heath, Ephraim Charles · 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 · 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,…

  • The Town That Fought Dallas and Won · 1.3 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 · 1.3 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 · 1.3 mi

    A notable event in Heath's history was a proposition placed on the November 4, 2008, ballot that, if passed, would have changed the name from 'City of Heath' to 'Village of Heath'. Of the 3,511 votes cast, 2,069 (58.9%)…

  • Barnes, Sterling Rex · 1.3 mi · Historical Marker

    (Gravesite in Heath Cemetery) Virginia native Sterling Rex Barnes (1799-1866) migrated to this area from Mississippi with his wife Martha Ann (Mitchell) (b. 1809) and family in 1846. A pioneer settler in the community…

  • Heath Methodist Church · 1.3 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…

  • Chandler Cemetery · 1.7 mi · Historical Marker

    KENTUCKY NATIVES HENRY MARTIN AND MARTHA (WADE) CHANDLER WERE SETTLED HERE BY 1860 AS SOME OF THE EARLIEST ANGLO PIONEERS IN THE AREA. OF THE SEVEN MARKED GRAVES IN CHANDLER CEMETERY, SIX ARE CHANDLER FAMILY MEMBERS.…

  • First Presbyterian Church of Rockwall · 3.2 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…

  • Travis Ranch, TX · 3.5 mi

    Nestled in the northwestern corner of Kaufman County, Travis Ranch is approximately 10 miles northeast of Mesquite and 15 miles northwest of Terrell. It shares its northern border with the city of Heath and is uniquely…

  • From Yellow Jacket to First-Round Receiver · 3.6 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…

  • The Lake That Used to Be a Town's Farmland · 3.8 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…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • The Night the Tornado Crossed the Lake · 3.8 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…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Rockwall (Rockwall) · 4.0 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).

  • McLendon-Chisholm, TX · 4.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through McLendon-Chisholm, a community that started as two separate settlements back in the 1850s. One was McLendon's, named for P. A. McLendon, who built a general store, cotton gin, and blacksmith shop…

  • Central National Road of the Republic of Texas · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    In an effort to improve overland transportation, the Republic of Texas Congress authorized the Central National Road in Feb. 1844. The roadway was to be 30 feet wide and cleared of stumps over 12 inches high. A survey…

  • First United Methodist Church of Rockwall · 4.4 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…

  • You Are Driving Over the Name · 4.6 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 · 4.6 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…

  • The Reservoir That Was Forney's Before It Was Dallas's · 4.6 mi

    Four miles north of downtown, the wide water of Lake Ray Hubbard spreads across the East Fork of the Trinity River, and most people boating on it have no idea it was first named for this town. The reservoir was built in…

  • Griffith, John Summerfield · 4.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    John Summerfield Griffith, businessman, Confederate officer, and state legislator, was born to Michael B. and Lydia (Crabb) Griffith on June 17, 1829, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He had two brothers and three…

  • Morris, John Walter · 4.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    John Walter Morris, baseball player, promoter, and executive, was born on January 30, 1880, at Rockwall, Texas. He left the University of Texas in 1902 to play with Corsicana of the Texas League , a league in which he…

  • Payne, Glen Weldon · 4.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Glen Weldon Payne, lead singer in Southern Gospel music , was born on October 20, 1926, near Rockwall, Texas, to cotton farmers Elmer and Vela Payne. The Paynes farmed in Munson and later Nevada, Texas. As a boy during…

  • Rockwall County · 4.7 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] · 4.7 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) · 4.7 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…

  • The Town That Was Born to Be Left Alone · 4.9 mi

    McLendon-Chisholm exists today because two old farming communities wanted to be left alone. McLendon's went back to about 1870, when P. A. McLendon put up a store, a cotton gin and a blacksmith shop. Chisholm took its…

  • The Engineering of Rural Character · 4.9 mi

    The peaceful, spread-out feel of McLendon-Chisholm isn't an accident of history; it's the product of a deliberate choice. On October 18, 1969, two neighboring communities incorporated as a single city, and the reason…

  • McLendon-Chisholm, TX · 4.9 mi

    Once two separate settlements, McLendon-Chisholm has a rich history that began around 1870 with the founding of McLendon by landowner P.A. McLendon. He established a store, cotton gin, and blacksmith shop, which…

  • A Whiff of the Old Chisholm Trail · 4.9 mi

    The Chisholm in this town's name is not the cattle trail. It is a family. Enoch Parson Chisholm settled 200 acres here in 1856, a farmer and a licensed preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who started the…

  • First Baptist Church of Rockwall · 4.9 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.…

  • Anderson Family Cemetery · 4.9 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…

  • Chisholm Cemetery · 5.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of what was once the town of Chisholm, named for Enoch P. Chisholm. He was a circuit-riding Methodist minister who settled here in the 1860s. In 1871, he donated land for this graveyard.…

  • The Park One City Owned Inside Another · 5.2 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…

  • Fine Dining in a 1920s Cottage on the Square · 5.2 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…

  • The Wall Under Rockwall · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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? · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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 Night Before the Hanging · 5.4 mi

    George Garner was due to hang in Rockwall on June fifteenth, eighteen seventy seven, for murdering former sheriff Alexander Starks. He never reached the gallows. In early June, he was refusing food and said he meant to…

  • The Town Named for a Wall Nobody Built · 5.4 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? · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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,…

  • The Smallest County in Texas · 5.4 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…

  • How the Earth Builds a Wall by Itself · 5.4 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. Sand filled cracks in the Cretaceous marl here, like grout…

  • The Stranger in Green Eyeglasses · 5.4 mi

    In September eighteen seventy six, a stranger in green eyeglasses started hanging around Rockwall. He loitered around town and said he wanted to buy land. Alexander Starks, the first elected sheriff of the new county,…

  • Sam Slick and the Giant of Rockwall · 5.4 mi

    Rockwall's newspaper, the Rockwall Success, ran a three-part story that claimed to explain the town's mysterious rock wall. The reports came from a correspondent who signed himself Sam Slick. On May twenty-eighth,…

  • Rockwall - The Buried Wall · 5.4 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…

  • The WPA Courthouse on the Square · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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…

  • Rockwall, TX · 5.4 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…

  • Two Courthouses Burned, and a Confession · 5.4 mi

    Rockwall County lost its first two courthouses to fire, and a man on his way to the gallows confessed to setting the first one. When the county was carved out of Kaufman County in eighteen seventy three, its first…

  • A 1950s Diner on the Dalrock Peninsula · 5.4 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…

  • The Smallest County in Texas · 5.4 mi

    Rockwall County is the smallest county in Texas, and it exists because the old county seat was inconvenient. From eighteen forty seven, this corner of North Texas belonged to Kaufman County. But the county seat,…

  • Named for an underground rock formation · 5.4 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 · 5.4 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…

  • Rockwall County · 5.4 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. · 5.4 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 Church of Christ in Rockwall · 5.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Rockwall, and right here is the site of Texas' first Church of Christ congregation. Imagine a whole church, about 300 people, traveling from Tennessee on horseback and in wagons! <break…

  • The Congressman Who Sold Bonnie and Clyde Their Cokes · 5.8 mi

    Interstate Thirty through Rockwall County is the Congressman Ralph Hall Highway. Ralph Moody Hall was born on May third, nineteen twenty three, in Fate, a town in Rockwall County. As a boy he worked at a pharmacy, and…

  • Loving, James and Margaret · 5.9 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…

  • The Town That Started as Morris · 6.1 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 · 6.1 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…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Rowlett (Rowlett) · 6.2 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).

  • Galloways' Old Home Place · 6.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Galloway Old Home Place, a house that's seen four generations of the same family. Confederate veteran Benjamin Franklin Galloway and his wife Eliza arrived here from Tennessee. They built the…

  • The Commissioner Who Built a Road Bond · 6.3 mi

    State Highway Sixty Six across Rockwall County is the Commissioner David Magness Memorial Highway. The idea came from the Rockwall County Commissioners Court, which passed a resolution asking the Legislature to honor…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Lakeview Centennial (Garland) · 6.5 mi

    Lakeview Centennial (Garland, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Coleman Hedgecock (0.417 avg).

  • Rowlett, TX · 6.6 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…

  • New Hope, TX (Dallas County) · 6.6 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 · 6.6 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 Day After Christmas Tornado · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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…

  • How You Rate a Wind You Never Measured · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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…

  • Rowlett, TX · 6.7 mi

    Rowlett, a city in Dallas and Rockwall Counties, has a rich history that dates back to its first post office opening in 1880, named 'Morris' after Postmaster Austin Morris. The town was later renamed 'Rowlett' after a…

  • Rails Return on the Old Katy Line · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi

    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 · 6.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Rowlett, Texas, a town with a name that might have come from a surveyor for Mercer's Colony. It started life in 1880 as Morris, with Austin Morris as its first postmaster. But three years after…

  • Brooklyn Lodge No. 386, A.F. & A.M. · 6.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Forney, Texas, a town that got its name from a railroad director. Back in 1873, the Texas and Pacific Railroad rolled in, and the village of Brooklyn was renamed Forney. The same year, the…

  • The One-Acre Rule That Went to the Supreme Court · 6.9 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 · 6.9 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 · 6.9 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 · 6.9 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.…

  • The Town the Schoolkids Named · 6.9 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 · 6.9 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 · 6.9 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…

  • 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…

  • Hillcrest Cemetery · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Hillcrest Cemetery in Forney. The earliest marked grave here belongs to M. Elizabeth Collins, who died in 1867, even before Forney was settled. By 1880, this site was formally set aside as a public…

  • Tripp Baptist Church · 7.0 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…

  • Long Creek Cemetery · 7.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Long Creek Cemetery, a burial ground that's been serving families since 1855. It started when Leona Caldwell, daughter of a War of 1812 veteran, became the first person laid to rest here. Captain A.…

  • Two Texas Towns Named Brooklyn · 7.2 mi

    Imagine this: the year is eighteen seventy-three, and you live in a promising little town called Brooklyn, Texas. You have a store, a church, a blacksmith shop. Then you get the news. The Texas and Pacific Railway, the…

  • Engineering a Town's Fate · 7.2 mi

    The existence of Forney in its current location is a story of 19th-century engineering and economics. When the Texas and Pacific Railway planned this stretch, its people did the cold arithmetic of grade and…

  • The 100-Year Wait to Become a Town · 7.2 mi

    Imagine a town waiting more than a century to make itself official. That's the story of Bonney. It began in 1873 as a station on the International and Great Northern Railroad, on land granted to Warren D. C. Hall and…

  • Engineering a Life on the Floodplain · 7.2 mi

    The existence of Bonney is a lesson in hydrology and engineering. You're driving on the floodplain of the Brazos River, a powerful and dynamic system. For millennia, the river has meandered across this coastal plain,…

  • The Hay Capital of the World · 7.2 mi

    In the late 19th century America ran on horsepower, and all those horses needed to eat. Forney stepped up to become their kitchen. Everybody remembers the cotton, but the town's first real fame came from hay. The deep…

  • Forney, TX · 7.2 mi

    On April 3, 2012, Forney experienced a significant event when an EF-3 tornado struck the city as part of a larger tornado outbreak. The tornado caused severe damage, destroying several homes and causing significant roof…

  • The Grave Marked Only by Bois d'Arc Stumps · 7.2 mi

    Long Creek Cemetery, off Long Creek Road in the southern reach of town, is the oldest thread of Sunnyvale's story. The Webb and Crownover families settled the Long Creek community around 1845, when this was still the…

  • Bonney, TX · 7.2 mi

    Bonney, Texas, has a rich history that began in 1873 when it was founded as a station on the International-Great Northern Railroad. The village was named after a conductor who worked on the Houston Tap and Brazoria…

  • A Star in the Window, a Marker by the Road · 7.2 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…

  • Forney Messenger · 7.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Forney, and right here, you're passing the home of its oldest continuously operating newspaper: The Forney Messenger. It first hit the streets back on April 16, 1896, thanks to M. J. Cox. Inside…

  • The Town Named Brooklyn That Had to Become Forney · 7.3 mi

    The streets around you started out as a place called Brooklyn. By 1870 settlers were drifting onto this stretch of blackland prairie, and one of them, John C. McKellar, opened the first general store. They called the…

  • The Day an EF3 Spared the Schoolchildren · 7.3 mi

    On the afternoon of April 3, 2012, a violent storm dropped an EF3 tornado just southwest of Forney, on the far side of Highway 80, and drove it north-northeast through town. With estimated winds up to 150 miles an hour,…

  • Two Old Storefronts That Hold the Whole Town's Memory · 7.3 mi

    At 200 South Bois d'Arc Street, two restored downtown buildings hold the Spellman Museum of Forney History, the place to understand everything else you're driving past. The Forney Historic Preservation League founded it…

  • The Printmaker Born on a Forney Farm · 7.3 mi

    Forney's most accomplished artist was born here on March 17, 1905. Coreen Mary Spellman, second of six children of an Irish farmer and banker, grew up on this Kaufman County land before leaving to chase a life in art…

  • Gilbert Grape's Mother Lived and Died in Forney · 7.3 mi

    One of the most quietly powerful screen performances of the 1990s came from a woman who spent her last years in a Forney home. Darlene Cates played the housebound mother of Johnny Depp's and Leonardo DiCaprio's…

  • 1899 Automobile Trip · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Forney, Texas, right where a piece of automotive history happened back in 1899. Look around – imagine this scene over a century ago! On October 5th of that year, a man named Edward Green, along…

  • Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    Hey road trippers! You're cruising past a piece of Texas history right here. Back in the early 1900s, before we had interstates, folks dreamed of paved roads connecting the country. The Dixie Overland Highway was one of…

  • Adams, Walter Dickson · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a business that served this town for nearly a century. Walter Dickson Adams arrived in Forney in 1887, and by 1893, he bought the local drugstore. He ran that business for an incredible…

  • Forney · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Forney, Texas. Before the railroad, this area was just a Native American trail and early roads. Pioneer families started settling here in the mid-1840s. By 1871, a village called Brooklyn…

  • How a Roadside Junk Trade Became the Antique Capital of Texas · 7.4 mi

    Forney's official claim to fame isn't a battle or a boom: it's old furniture. In the late 1960s a man named Glenn "Red" Whaley opened the town's first antique business on the east edge of Forney, and the idea caught.…

  • William Madison McDonald · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the birthplace of William Madison McDonald, a man known as 'Gooseneck Bill'. Born in 1866 near Johnson Point, his parents were former slaves. McDonald was a standout student, even working for a…

  • Moore, Dick P. · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Dick P. Moore home, built in 1910, right in the middle of Forney's economic boom. Moore, a merchant and cotton farmer, built this house for his family. His wife, Nancy, lived here until 1958.…

  • Herfurth House · 7.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Herfurth House, a testament to early 20th-century Texas farming and architecture. In 1908, John Samuel Herfurth purchased 151 acres near Rowlett, bringing his parents to Dallas County. He soon…

  • McKellar House · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the McKellar House in Forney, a home that's seen over a century of Texas history. It started as a landowner and merchant's home, built way back in 1873 by John Alexander McKellar. But its most…

  • Duncan and Emma McKellar House · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Duncan and Emma McKellar House, built back in 1886. This two-story home was one of the first high-style residences in Forney, showcasing Queen Anne and Eastlake architectural details. The…

  • The Wall That Isn't A Wall · 7.6 mi

    Now let's step back and talk about the ground you're standing on, because Fate sits inside one of the strangest counties in Texas. Rockwall County is named for an actual buried wall of rock. In eighteen fifty-two,…

  • The Nickname Over the Doorway · 7.6 mi

    Here's a town name that looks like it's about destiny, and isn't. Fate, Texas, sitting in northern Rockwall County just northeast of the county seat, is named for a man's nickname. William Lafayette Brown, an early…

  • That Which Was Spoken · 7.6 mi

    You're passing through Fate, Texas, a town named for a settler's nickname, not for the word almost everyone assumes it borrowed. But that word carries its own deep story, so here's the detour. Fate, the word, comes from…

  • The Mail Named the Town · 7.6 mi

    The name on the town sign here, Fate, Texas, got locked in by a piece of frontier bureaucracy. In eighteen eighty-six a doctor named Wiley Turner Barnes owned land just northeast of the original settlement, and when the…

  • First in Texas to Reach the Farms · 7.6 mi

    Here's a first that this little town owns outright. On August first, eighteen ninety-nine, Fate, Texas became the first town in all of Texas to get a rural free delivery route. Here's why that mattered. For most of…

  • A Hundred Sleepy Years, Then Twenty Loud Ones · 7.6 mi

    Here's the twist the name almost seems to have set up. For most of its life, Fate was tiny and shrinking. It had about one hundred people in eighteen ninety, crept up near three hundred by nineteen twenty, then slid…

  • A French Forest to a Texas Sheriff · 7.6 mi

    The name over this town, Fate, Texas, is a nickname riding on top of a much grander one, and that grander name belongs to a famous Frenchman, not to anyone born out here. Lafayette entered American baby books almost…

  • Pull On The Name · 7.6 mi

    So pull on this one short name and look at everything it holds. Fate isn't about destiny at all; it's the nickname of a settler named Lafayette Brown, though a second Lafayette in town keeps the historians honest. That…

  • The Spanish-Roofed Schoolhouse the Depression Built · 7.6 mi

    At 600 South Bois d'Arc Street sits a building that looks more like a mission than a prairie schoolhouse, and that's the point. Forney's high school was erected in 1938 and 1939 with a grant from the federal Works…

  • Forney High School Building · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising past the old Forney High School building, a Spanish Colonial revival gem. It went up between 1938 and 1939, thanks to the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. Look for the tile roof, the buff brick,…

  • William and Blanche Brooks House · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the William and Blanche Brooks House in Forney. Built in 1898, this home was designed by Dallas architect Charles Alexander Gill. It was a wedding gift to the Brooks from Yancy McKellar. Notice the…

  • Forney Independent School Dist. · 7.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of early education in Forney, which began around 1868 with a small room serving as both school and church. The Forney Independent School District was formed in 1899, and this site saw…

  • Wiley Dragged the Town to the Tracks · 7.7 mi

    As you drive through Fate, notice the railroad tracks that still slice through the center of town. Those tracks are the reason you’re here, and not a mile down the road. In 1886, the original settlement of Fate was…

  • The Tyranny of the Straight Line · 7.7 mi

    The railroad tracks you see in Fate are more than just a piece of history; they're a lesson in 19th-century engineering and economics. When the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, or 'Katy,' railroad planned its route in the 1880s,…

  • Fate, TX · 7.7 mi

    Fate, Texas, has a rich history marked by resilience and growth. The town was settled shortly after the Civil War and was originally located 1.5 miles north of its current downtown. In 1886, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas…

  • Where the Cotton Gin Became an Antique Mall · 7.7 mi

    At 210 East Broad Street stands the most literal monument to Forney's two great industries stacked on top of each other. The metal-clad building was once the heart of a cotton-gin complex, machinery built by the Murray…

  • Fate, TX · 7.7 mi

    The name 'Fate' is believed to have originated from one of two influential residents, William Lafayette Brown or GW Lafayette Peyton, who were both nicknamed 'Fate' and lived in the area during the 1860s. Land…

  • Dozier, Otis Marion · 7.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, and right here near Forney, you're passing through the hometown of Otis Dozier. He was a prominent painter and printmaker, a key member of the Dallas Nine group of artists. During the…

  • Spellman, Coreen Mary · 7.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Forney, Texas, the birthplace of Coreen Mary Spellman, a remarkable artist who made her mark on the Texas art scene. Born in 1905, Spellman developed a passion for art early on, nurtured by her…

  • Forney, TX · 7.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Forney, Texas, a town that owes its very name to a bit of bureaucratic confusion and a railroad. Originally called Brooklyn, the settlers applied for a post office in 1873. But there was already a…

  • Fate's Man in Washington · 7.7 mi

    This small town was the birthplace of a giant of Texas politics. In 1923, Ralph Moody Hall was born in Fate. He would go on to serve in the United States Congress for 34 years, becoming a powerful voice for North Texas.…

  • Blackland Cemetery · 7.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Blackland Cemetery near Fate. In 1882, land was donated here for a school, church, and cemetery, combining with the older George V. Bost family burial ground. The oldest marked grave dates back to…

  • The Yellow Wood Hard as Iron That Named a Forney Street · 7.8 mi

    One of downtown's oldest streets isn't called Bois d'Arc by accident. The bois d'arc tree, Maclura pomifera, also known as Osage orange or horse-apple, grows thick across the Kaufman County blackland, and its wood is…

  • Fate Lodge No. 802, A.F. & A.M. · 7.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Fate, Texas, where a lodge with a long history has been serving the community for over a century. Fate Lodge No. 802, part of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, received its charter way back on…

  • Fate Presbyterian Church · 7.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Fate Presbyterian Church, a community cornerstone since the mid-1880s. When this congregation officially formed, the town of Fate was just getting started, right alongside the…

  • From Dealers in Everything to the Feed Yard Grill · 8.1 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…

  • Fate, TX · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Fate, Texas, a town with a name that sounds like destiny. But its origin is much more personal. It all started with Lafayette Brown, an early settler nicknamed 'Fate' by his wife. In 1880, a post…

  • Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Rowlett · 8.2 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…

  • First Baptist Church of Sunnyvale · 8.3 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…

  • Caney Cemetery · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Caney Cemetery, established in 1904 when M. J. Fox and the Amis family donated land for burials. The earliest marked grave here is Elizabeth Neusum, who died in 1895. Today, it remains a record of…

  • Following the Creek That Named the Town · 8.5 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…

  • Mount Zion Cemetery · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Mount Zion Cemetery. John Dewees (1819-1893) and his wife Martha Jane Stevens Dewees (1824-1905) migrated to Texas from Indiana in 1856 with their family of seven children. They purchased 300 acres…

  • The Night the Twisters Came Up Pleasant Valley · 8.8 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…

  • The Wartime Highway Name That Waited Sixty Years · 8.8 mi

    The World War Two Veterans Memorial Highway is a name with an odd history. On August first, nineteen forty four, a Texas highway minute order named U S Highway Eighty the Veterans of World War Two Highway, all the way…

  • Mills Cemetery · 8.8 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,…

  • Forney High School — State Softball 2026 · 9.0 mi

    Forney High School in Forney, Texas qualified for the 2026 UIL state softball championships, reaching the state tournament (final four) in Class six A, Division Two.

  • The High School That Sent Players to the Pros · 9.0 mi

    For a town its size, Forney has thrown a surprising number of people onto big stages, and a lot of them passed through Forney High School first. Caleb Hanie quarterbacked the Forney team to back-to-back top-three…

  • First Presbyterian Church of Forney · 9.1 mi · Historical Marker

    Hey road trippers! You're driving past the site of Forney's First Presbyterian Church. Believe it or not, this congregation formed from a merger of two older churches. Back in 1872, the Brooklyn Church of the Cumberland…

  • A Ranch House Older Than the Town Around It · 9.2 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…

  • Florence Ranch Home · 9.2 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…

  • Lawrence Farmstead · 9.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Lawrence Farmstead, a place that saw incredible growth right here in Mesquite. Stephen Decatur Lawrence inherited about 640 acres in 1874 and started building his first home. Just…

  • Part of Fate Rolled This Way · 9.5 mi

    The Royse City you're in today was built from scratch — and partly built out of another town's buildings. In 1885 word got out that the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, the Katy, would run its line through this part…

  • Engineering a Town on the Prairie · 9.5 mi

    The existence of Royse City is a piece of 19th-century economic planning as much as engineering. When the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway pushed its line through this part of the county in the mid-1880s, it wasn't…

  • Royse City, TX · 9.5 mi

    Royse City's history is deeply intertwined with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway line. The city was settled in 1885 when the railway came through the area, and it was named after G. B. Royse, who plotted the town…

  • Kimbrough, Robert Snead · 9.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Mesquite, Texas, a town that owes a lot to one man: Robert Snead Kimbrough. He arrived in 1874 with just a few dollars and a dream. Kimbrough didn't just settle here; he helped build this…

  • Officer Richard Houston II Memorial Highway · 9.5 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…

  • Florence Ranch Homestead · 9.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Mesquite, and right here, at 1424 Barnes Bridge Road, is the Florence Ranch Homestead. Founded in 1871 by David and Julia Florence, this wasn't just a farm – it was the heart of a family that…

  • Masten, William K. · 9.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dallas County, and right here, in what is now Mesquite, you're passing through the stomping grounds of William K. Masten. He was a preacher, a businessman, and a Confederate officer. In March of…

  • Mesquite, TX (Dallas County) · 9.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Mesquite, Texas, a city that owes its very existence to a railroad. In May of 1873, the Texas and Pacific Railway laid down tracks, and right here, a depot town sprang up. Station agent William…

  • Christian College of the Southwest · 9.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Mesquite, in Dallas County, where a unique educational experiment once stood. Christian College of the Southwest, originally Garland Christian College, opened its doors in 1962 with a mission to…

  • Pleasant Valley Cemetery · 9.5 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…

  • CCC Company 850 · 9.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past CCC Company 850. During the Great Depression, Hicks Jobson set aside eight acres of his farm to allow the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt&#x2019;s New Deal…

  • The Mesquite Pitmaster Who Reinvented the Smoker · 9.8 mi

    Mesquite BBQ at 145 E. Davis Street in the old downtown is the oldest restaurant in town, but the real legend is the man who opened it. Herbert Oyler started the place in 1959, and he wasn't just a cook, he was an…

  • First Methodist Church of Mesquite · 9.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Mesquite's very first Methodist church. Back in 1857, before Mesquite was even a town, folks gathered for services led by a traveling preacher. They met in a schoolhouse until 1863, when…

  • The Night Sam Bass Burned the Express Car for $152 · 9.9 mi

    On the night of April 10, 1878, the most famous outlaw in Texas hit the depot you're near. Sam Bass and his gang, including Seaborn Barnes, Henry Underwood, Arkansas Johnson, and Frank Jackson, held up a Texas & Pacific…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Sachse (Sachse) · 9.9 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 Town the Railroad Drew on a Prairie · 9.9 mi

    You're standing where a railroad survey line decided a town into existence. In May 1873, Texas & Pacific Railway engineer A.R. Alcott platted a new depot stop out on the open Dallas County prairie and named it Mesquite,…

  • The Mall That Brought Air Conditioning to Shopping · 9.9 mi

    Where a FedEx logistics center now hums near US 80 and Loop 12, Mesquite once held a genuine retail milestone. Big Town Mall opened in 1959 as the first enclosed, air-conditioned shopping mall in the Southwest, and some…

  • The Lawrence Sisters and the Farm Time Forgot · 9.9 mi

    On East Kearney Street, a thirteen-acre green island survives in the middle of suburban Mesquite, and it's there because three sisters simply never left. Stephen Decatur Lawrence began building the family house in 1874,…

  • From a Sears Puppet in Mesquite to a Vegas Marquee · 9.9 mi

    One of the most successful entertainers ever to come out of Mesquite started with a library book and a puppet from Sears. Terry Fator grew up here, and his obsession began in the fifth grade when he found a book called…

  • The Mesquite Kid Who Drummed for Pearl Jam · 9.9 mi

    Before the flannel and the Seattle stages, one of grunge's signature drummers was a kid growing up in Mesquite. Dave Abbruzzese was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1968, but he came up here in Mesquite, drumming his…

  • Public Education in Mesquite · 9.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Mesquite, a town with a long history of public education. It all started back in 1885 with a small community school. That school served students until 1902, when the first building for the Mesquite…

  • Sam Bass Train Robbery · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Mesquite, where the legendary outlaw Sam Bass and his gang hit the Texas & Pacific train on April 10th, 1878. They grabbed $152 in cash, but get this – they missed a hidden shipment worth $30,000!…

  • Site of Galloway Farmstead · 10.0 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…

  • City of Mesquite · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the birthplace of Mesquite, Texas! It all started in May of <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1873</say-as>, when engineer A.R. Alcott laid out this town for the Texas & Pacific Railroad. The…

  • Millwood and Millwood Cemetery · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Collin County, passing the site of what used to be Millwood. It all started around 1846 with a lumber mill, but by the early 1850s, this place was booming. Think post office, businesses, grist…

  • Holley-McWhorter-Greenhaw Family · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Mesquite area where three generations of the Holley, McWhorter, and Greenhaw families left their mark. Nathaniel Holley arrived in 1884, eventually opening a grocery store and serving as…

  • The Black Cube Where Doom Was Born · 10.1 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,…

  • The Mesquite Champion Who Became a Green Beret · 10.2 mi

    Inside Mesquite, State Highway Three Fifty Two is the Staff Sergeant Jeremie S. Border Memorial Highway. Jeremie Border played on Mesquite High School's two thousand one state champion football team. He was an Eagle…

  • City Lake Park · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Mesquite, where the population was just 1,600 after World War II. In 1947, the city developed its first park, City Lake Park, thanks to donations of land and labor. It started with plans for a…

  • The Rodeo Capital of Texas · 10.3 mi

    You are now in the official 'Rodeo Capital of Texas,' and that's not just a slogan — it's a title that came by act of the state legislature. Mesquite has been putting on rodeos since 1946, when Charlie Columbus McNally…

  • The Ghost of Big Town Mall · 10.3 mi

    Near the intersection of U.S. 80 and Big Town Boulevard, you're passing the ghost of a revolution in American culture. In 1959, this spot became home to Big Town Mall, one of the nation's first enclosed, air-conditioned…

  • The Fastest Man to Come Out of Sachse High · 10.3 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…

  • Officer Richard Houston II Memorial Highway · 10.3 mi · Historical Marker

    Interstate Six Thirty Five inside the Mesquite city limits is named for Officer Richard Houston the Second of the Mesquite Police Department. On the third of December, two thousand twenty one, Houston answered a…

  • Mesquite, TX · 10.3 mi

    Mesquite was founded on March 14, 1873, on land along the Texas & Pacific Railway, which ran from Dallas to Shreveport, Louisiana. The city was officially incorporated on December 3, 1887, after electing Mayor J.E.…

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