A Sunday stroll

On a May Spring Day, where the sun peaked through the clouds and the warm breeze soaked through the skin like lotion, I took a drive.

The journey began along US 380 and into McKinney before skirting north along Texas Highway 5, which was where old US 75 reigned from the Great Depression to the end of the 1950's.

 

Mr. J. B. Wilmeth and Collin McKinney's original homestead.

From there it was time to let the wind guide the truck where I almost found the perfect place to enjoy a lunch.

Unfortunately,

 

Ten minutes later, I drove through Van Alstyne, where I found a Texaco that became an auto garage,

 

before finding the gateway to a historic route

 

 

The Houston and Central Texas Railroaad once upon a time brought people, cash and adventure into Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and beyond.

The King of Trails Highway was the auto trail that came before US 75.

 

However, State Highway 6 (TX 6), one of the original 26 Texas highways, took over. The 1917-1919 alignment ran from Waco to Oklahoma (current routes of US 77 from Waco to Dallas and US 75 or TX 5 from Dallas to the Red River) US 75.

 

After the lure of the trail down history. I found a couple of other historic communities.

 

According to the city of Tom Bean website, Thomas Bean, a wealthy Bonham landowner and surveyor, donated fifty acres of land in southeast Grayson County to be used for a branch railroad line from Sherman to Commerce. Bean died in 1887; in that year the city of Tom Bean was established. Nearby Whitemound, which was bypassed by the railroad, lost its post office to Tom Bean's city in 1888 resulting in many Whitemound settlers moving to the new town.

Mr. Bean's estate began to sell town lots surrounding the railroad in the 1890s. The city school was moved in 1891 from a one-room structure to a two-story building with an auditorium. Several Christian denominations, including the Church of Christ, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist, established churches in town. The city charter was signed in 1897 and the first mayor was Ice B. Reeves.

In the early days of the 20th century, the city boomed. Within a few years, it boasted a grain company, a furniture company, a drugstore, a newspaper called the Tom Bean Bulletin, a saloon, a dance hall, a movie theater, and the Tom Bean social club. As time progressed, the sharp increase in automobile travel and transport, and the decline of cotton as the principal crop of the area, led businesses to the larger cities of Denison and Sherman.

Over a mile east on Texas Highway 11 is,

 

According to the Texas State Historical Association (THSA), (Kentucky Town) "though the area was sparsely settled as early as 1837, a community did not begin to develop there until 1849, when the first substantial group of settlers, traveling in a wagon train from Kentucky, arrived. Others soon followed, and by the end of 1850 two stores and a mill, one of the first in Grayson County, had been established. On January 8, 1852, Dr. Josiah L. Heiston purchased land from Enoch Jones and laid out a town, which he called Ann Eliza after his daughter. Because the town was populated primarily by settlers from Kentucky, it was soon referred to by such names as the Kentuckians' Town. By June 1854, when the first post office was established, the official designation was Kentucky Town."

After which I got onto Farm Road 697 for several wild winding miles until I reached TX Highway 11 and reached Sherman...

Sources:
Tom Bean