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Historic Downtown Plano focuses on the city's main mercantile area of Mechanic (Fifteenth Street) and Main (K Avenue) and the surrounding heritage districts of Haggard Park, Old Towne, and the Douglass Community. Incorporated in 1873, downtown Plano has endured at least five major fires, the Great Depression, closure of the interurban railway, and retail and corporate development to the west of the area. In recent years, downtown Plano has benefited from ongoing redevelopment and revitalization as an urban transit village with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light rail train service to the area--taking us back to those days of old.
The history of Plano, Texas is as rich as the soil that attracted early settlers to the area in the mid to late 1800s. Vividly portrayed here in over 200 images, author Nancy McCulloch recreates for the reader the remarkable history of this forward-thinking town. A large number of residents from Kentucky and Tennessee were attracted to the rich black soil and farming prospects of this part of Peters Colony. Sam Houston, as a former governor of Tennessee, enticed families from these states to travel to the Plano area and seek out a new and better way of life. From 1870 to 1886, Planos population expanded tenfold. As early as the late 1800s the community developed a reputation for progressive thinking and beautiful homes.
From goat men to witch ladies and spooky little girls, dive into the haunted history of Plano, Texas. Plano's old homes and businesses are rife with haunted history. Explore eerie urban legends like the Goat Man, the Clown Threat, and Ranch 111, where devil worshipers performed their rituals. The Evaporating Apparition spooked the staff at the Art Centre Theatre, while the grumpy spirit of an old rancher stalks the Masonic Lodge. Some specters are harmless, such as the Giggling Ghost, a little girl in the Cox Building with a penchant for peanut butter and pranks. Other figures own a more sinister reputation. The Witch Lady of Plano was feared by city youth and monitored by the FBI. Mary Jacobs examines the ghostly fallout of Plano's darkest moments, from the smallpox epidemic to the gruesome Muncey family murders.
Although founded in 1841, Dallas did not experience significant growth until 1873 when the Texas and Pacific (T&P) Railroad crossed the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (H&TC) near downtown. Securing these railroads led to a prolific building boom that has never fully ended, even during the Great Depression and subsequent world wars. Dallas's ability to sustain growth and development as a banking and commercial center led to the demolition of much of the early built environment, a trend that continues even today. Lost Dallas explores and documents those buildings, neighborhoods, and places that have been lost and even forgotten since the city's modest antebellum beginning.
Texas has a long, romantic history when it comes to railroads. But even though steam engines and streetcars offer nonstop service to Nostalgia City, there's a dark side to Texas rail. The Black Widow of Fort Worth engineered a fatal double-cross at a railroad crossing. The Mountaineer Madman brought death to the Texas Electric Railway, while the Trolley Bandit terrorized the citizens of El Paso. From a freak accident involving a banana peel to a tragic trip to see Santa Claus, Jeff Campbell and the staff of the Interurban Railway Museum cross the Lone Star State on trains derailed by murder and mayhem.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar “A tender, spiky family saga about love in all its mysterious incarnations.” —Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs and Birds of America “Absolutely luminous . . . Weaves the transience of suburbia between the highs and lows of a family saga . . . Shocks, awes, and delights.” —Bryan Washington, author of Memorial From the outside, the Chengs seem like so-called model immigrants. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn’t this what they sacrificed so much for? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting into motion a string of misunderstandings that not only threaten to set their community against them but force to the surface the secrets that have made them fear one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy? Nights When Nothing Happened is gripping storytelling immersed in the crosscurrents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent.
Did you know that Plano once had a winning semipro baseball team? And its own university, boasting a pagoda imported from Malaysia? Or that the city once proudly proclaimed itself the "Mule Capital of the World"? Meet the Native American Planoite who walked in space, the African American entrepreneur who prospered in Jim Crow Texas and the man behind the "mystery stone" uncovered in the Collinwood House. Visit a military tank, a five-hundred-year-old tree and the pioneer cemetery started by a smallpox epidemic. From the town's contributions to World War II to the secrets lurking beneath Collin Creek Mall, unlock the astonishingly large storehouse of Plano's hidden history.
The Plano of today would not be recognizable to the pioneers who settled this section of the blackland prairie. Arriving in the early 1840s, these colonists from Tennessee and Kentucky were captivated by Sam Houstons stump speeches about the rich, fertile farmland of North Texas. All of their frontier cemeteries, large and small, are now surrounded by golf courses, subdivisions, and commercial development. The final resting places of Planos pioneers still exist because of the hard work of cemetery associations, civic groups, concerned citizens, the City of Plano Parks Department, and the Plano Conservancy for Historic Preservation. These silent spaces hold a wealth of history that helps tell the story of Planos beginnings as a rural farming community.