Allen

The town's namesake made his name in law before railroads. The Handbook of Texas says Ebenezer Allen was born in Newport, New Hampshire, in 1804, came to Texas in the 1830s and became attorney general under Anson Jones in December 1844. He helped Jones frame the terms of annexation to the United States and served for a while as secretary of state. He was attorney general again under Governor Peter Bell from 1849 to 1853. In 1848 he helped win the charter for the Galveston and Red River Railroad. He supported secession and died in Virginia in 1863.

What the plaque says

Allen Fertile land and plentiful water drew settlers to this area from as early as the 1840s. This part of Collin County was well populated by 1876 when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad built a water supply stop on Cottonwood Creek near this site. The railroad stop and newly created town lots established a center of commerce for local farmers and their families and provided better equipment and broader markets for agricultural production. The surrounding open prairie soon was developed into small family farms. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad filed documents to create the town of Allen from the James L. Read survey in 1876. The village was named for Ebenezer Allen, a former Republic and State of Texas attorney general and a founder of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. A dry goods store, barber shop, and school soon opened in the rapidly growing town. Sam Bass reportedly led an outlaw gang that robbed the Allen Depot on February 22, 1878. This was probably the first successful train robbery in Texas. By 1884 the town of Allen had three churches, a flour mill, and a population of 350. In 1908 the Texas Traction Company built an electric railway through town, calling it the Interurban. The citizenry numbered 550 by 1915. Allen was incorporated in 1953 with 400 residents. Electric railway service ended in 1948 but railway freight service continued. Strong economic growth in the Dallas-Fort Worth area helped the town's population grow to include more than 19,000 citizens in the 1990s. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 4.2 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 18 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 24 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 24 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Allen Water Station — 0.2 mi
• Allen Station of the Texas Electric Railway — 0.8 mi
• Allen Cemetery — 0.9 mi
• First Methodist Church of Allen — 1.4 mi