Wylie, Texas

Everything Wylie is known for

1 song mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Wylie

Songs About Wylie

Wylie
Kylie Rae Harris
77%
"Wylie"

Artists From Wylie

K
Kylie Rae Harris
country
L
Lola Kinsey
pop

Rivers & Roads in Song near Wylie

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

Interstate 45 8 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Trinity River 11 songs Sabine River 13 songs Sulphur River 2 songs Interstate 35 43 songs

Musical Heritage

One of the Last Weekly Oprys RoadyGoat

You're on Ballard Avenue in downtown Wylie, at the Wylie Opry, a room that seats about two hundred fifty and still fills up some nights. George and Clara Riley started this back in the early nineteen-nineties, in the warehouse district on Cooper Street, right next to the railroad tracks — every time a train came through, it drowned out the band. Eventually the Opry moved here, to downtown Wylie, where trains aren't a problem anymore. LeGrant Gable took over from the Rileys in May of 2000 and has kept the lights on since. Friday nights it's a free gospel show. Saturday nights the Texas Legend Band plays country for a room full of regulars. It's one of the last weekly Opry-style venues still running in Texas, a small-town tradition that never needed a bigger building to survive.

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History of Wylie

The Candy Montgomery Case - Wylie, Texas, 1980 RoadyGoat

1980

In the small town of Wylie, Texas, on a Friday the thirteenth in June of nineteen eighty, one of the most unsettling murder cases in Texas history unfolded behind a closed door. Two women — Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore — were both churchgoing mothers and members of the First United Methodist Church of Lucas. Candy had been carrying on a months-long affair with Betty's husband, Allan Gore. When Betty confronted her, a struggle broke out over an ax. What started as a confrontation ended with forty-one blows. Betty Gore was dead. Candy Montgomery was arrested, tried, and — in one of the most stunning verdicts in Texas courtroom history — found not guilty. She pleaded self-defense. On October thirtieth, nineteen eighty, nine women and three men believed her. HBO's Love and Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen, brought the case back to national attention in twenty twenty-three. Candy Montgomery quietly moved away. Betty Gore's family has lived with it ever since.

The Volleyball Game RoadyGoat

1978

Nothing about this starts in Wylie. It starts a few miles northwest, at the Methodist church in Lucas, where two young couples sang in the same choir and played on the same weekly volleyball team. Late in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, Candy Montgomery and Allan Gore collided going for the same ball, and afterward they stayed out on the court talking longer than the game required. What followed was an affair conducted with an almost clerical care. They set terms. They agreed on limits. They agreed in advance how it would end, and when it ended, it ended by agreement, about the way they had said it would. Both families kept going to the same church. Their daughters kept playing together. Betty Gore kept teaching school. Candy Montgomery kept singing in the choir. For roughly two years that was the whole story, and if it had stayed the whole story, nobody outside Collin County would know a single one of these names.

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Friday the Thirteenth, Ten in the Morning RoadyGoat

1980

Here is the thirteenth of June, nineteen eighty, the way it looked on Candy Montgomery's calendar before anybody knew what it was. Morning: Vacation Bible School with the kids. Then errands, because Father's Day was that Sunday and somebody had to buy the cards. The night before, the children had talked the grownups into a sleepover after a trip to see The Empire Strikes Back, which meant the Gores' older girl was staying at the Montgomery house, which meant Candy had agreed to run her to a swim lesson the next morning, which meant somebody had to go get the child's swimsuit. So around ten o'clock, on a Friday, Candy Montgomery drove over to the Gore house on Dogwood Drive to pick up a swimsuit. That is the entire reason she was there. Every account of that day, from every side, agrees on that much.

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Gallagher House

1917

Designed as an American Foursquare house with Craftsman details, the Gallagher House is a local example of an early 20th century upper-middle class home. The two-story frame home features a hipped roof with central dormer, exposed rafter tails, and full-width front porch supported by box columns. The year of construction, 1917, is in raised plaster numbers on the dormer.
 Vincent Bernard “V.B.” Gallagher (1870-1940) and his wife, Mary Ann “Mamie” (Scanlan) (1871-1964), built the home to accommodate their large and active family. V.B. Gallagher was a civic and business leader. Owner of the town’s oldest continuously operated business, the Wylie Insurance Group, he also served as a director and officer of the First National Bank of Wylie. When the first schoolhouse was built in Wylie, Gallagher became secretary of the school board. A few years later, he became treasurer. However, his most impactful civic endeavor was promoting the construction of a dam on the East Fork of the Trinity River. He and the Commercial Club of Wylie presented the most effective solution for Dallas’ water supply problem. The reservoir is now known as Lake Lavon.
 In 1943, after V.B. Gallagher’s death, Ollie Addington (1903-1973) and his wife, Emma (Locke) Addington (1907-1977), moved into the house and welcomed the Wylie community into their home, hosting many events and social gatherings over 20 years of ownership. Ollie Addington was a Lions Club member, school board trustee and two-term city councilman. Emma Addington was first president of the Wylie Garden Club and held leadership positions on various church committees.

RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2019


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City of Wylie

1850

Located in south central Collin County, Wylie and Nickelville began as settlements on the west side of the east fork of the Trinity River. Pioneers began arriving in the area in the early 1850s, attracted by the plentiful water supply from the river, the productive soil of the Blackland Prairie and the offer of land grants by the Peters Colony. By 1883, a post office named Nickelville opened next to a drug store and, by 1885, there were three churches, the post office, a hotel and the Nickelville school. The town moved to a new location in 1886 when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad company tracks were constructed just a half a mile north of Nickelville. That June, the name changed to Wylie in honor of colonel W.D. Wylie, the railroad right-of-way agent. The town quickly began to grow with new businesses and a steady flow of railroad employees. In 1887, the town incorporated and elected the first mayor, John Howard Picket from Nickelville. The next year, the St. Louis and southwestern railroad began construction in Wylie. Both railroads drastically changed the economy and landscape of the area, increasing agricultural production and spurring business growth. In the 1920s, onions became a staple crop in Wylie, eventually garnering the title, “Onion Capital of the United States.” Clothing manufacturing, the completion of Lake Lavon in the 1940s and the construction of a highway connecting Wylie to Dallas and Garland led to more growth in the area. In 1981, the TV series Dallas began filming in Wylie. The location of Wylie and its appealing resources have attracted residents since the mid-nineteenth century.

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Stibbens, Charles C.

1836

(May 14, 1810-March 31, 1879) A native of Maryland, Charles C. Stibbens came to Texas about 1835. He served in the Army during the Texas Revolution, participating in the Battle of San Jacinto. He settled in Anderson county soon after the war and worked as a farmer and shoemaker. Following the death of his first wife, Julie Ann Frost Slaughter, he was married in 1849 to Elizabeth Creekman. They eventually were the parents of eleven children. Charles and Elizabeth Stibbens moved to Saint Paul in 1870. He is the only veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto known to be buried in Collin county. (1992) Incise on base: Brenda Burns Kellow and James C. Evans, Jr.

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Wylie, TX (Collin County)

1870

Wylie is on State Highway 78 sixteen miles south of McKinney in south central Collin County. It was organized in the early 1870s and originally called Nickelville, reportedly after the name of the first store. In 1886 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway laid tracks a half mile north of the original townsite. Within a year the businesses of Nickelville had moved to take advantage of the railroad and had named their new location Wylie, in honor of W. D. Wylie, a right-of-way agent for the railroad. That same year Wylie received a post office branch and incorporated, choosing an alderman form of government. Two years later the St. Louis Southwestern Railway reached the town. The two railroads and the rich agricultural region of the Blackland Prairies contributed to the town's growth. Wylie had a population of 400 in 1890 and 773 in 1900. Before 1920 the community had over thirty-five businesses, including two banks, a school, and a weekly newspaper. Unlike many rural Texas communities, Wylie grew during the Great Depression years, reaching 914 residents by 1940. In part this was a result of increased dairy farming to meet the demands of nearby Dallas. Following World War II the population continued to increase. The construction of Lake Lavon five miles north of town and the selection of Wylie to house the offices of the North Texas Municipal Water District, designed to provide water for towns in four counties, pushed the population to 1,804 in 1960. In the next twenty years the population more than doubled as a result of the growth of the Dallas urban area. In 1980 there were 3,152 residents and ninety businesses in Wylie. In 1990 the population was 8,716, and Wylie had spread into Rockwall and Dallas counties. By 2000 the population reached 15,132.

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Wylie, TX (Taylor County)

1902

Wylie is on State Highway 89, or Buffalo Gap Road, five miles southwest of Abilene in north central Taylor County. It bears the name of J. J. Wylie, a pioneer of the area who moved to Texas from Tishomingo, Mississippi, in the mid-nineteenth century and to Taylor County in 1880. Though early residents had farmed in the Wylie area from the time that patents were first issued in 1881, community development did not begin until 1902, when John H. Vance arrived from Austin, purchased land to the southwest of Abilene, and built the first general store, with a residence attached at the back for his family, on the southwest corner of what is now the intersection of Buffalo Gap Road and Antilley Road. The same year residents expressed a need for a school and a church, so Mary V. Wylie, widow of J. J. Wylie, donated land across the road to the north of the Vance store. While early records show that a Wylie school district was designated as early as 1888, none can be found to indicate that a school ever operated until 1902. Three prominent citizens contributed $120 apiece for the purchase of materials, and residents pooled their talents to erect a twenty-by-thirty-foot wooden building for use as both a school and a church. The community remained nameless until 1904, when John Vance installed a post office in his store and named it Sambo, for "Brother Sam," his good friend and neighbor Sam Little. The Sambo post office operated from December 1904 until February 1912, when Abilene began rural postal delivery. By 1915 the Sambo school was inadequate to house the increased student population. When Mrs. Wylie donated two acres across the road to the east she stipulated that the name of the school be changed to Wylie, in honor of her late husband. The land and the stipulation were accepted, and after citizens voted a $3,000 bond issue, a two-story plank building was constructed in 1916 and named Wylie. The Wylie community experienced tremendous growth while most rural communities declined. Between 1950 and 1986 its population more than tripled, and in the 1980s land development caused property valuations to increase more than tenfold. Wylie is a thriving suburb of Abilene.

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Things to Do in Wylie

historical 22.6 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
historical 22.6 mi away
Dealey Plaza

On November 22 1963 President John F Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in an open Lincoln convertible and was shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas…
quirky 20.8 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 2.0 mi away
Southfork Ranch

The filming location of TV's Dallas. JR Ewing lived here.
quirky 5.3 mi away
Southfork Ranch

The Ewing family TV mansion from the Dallas soap opera sits on two hundred acres in Parker Texas and is open for tours every day. JRs bedroom is there. The…
spooky 17.5 mi away
Lady of White Rock Lake

Since the 1930s drivers along White Rock Lake report picking up a soaking-wet woman in a white dress. She asks for a ride home then vanishes leaving the seat…
food 21.5 mi away
Pecan Lodge

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

Everything Near Wylie

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

Explore Wylie on the Map
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