Argyle

Before the railroad, the neighborhood answered to Pilot Knob and Waintown. Emily Wilson was postmistress there in 1878, running the mail from her log cabin two miles east of the future town while a stagecoach brought it in. The Texas and Pacific arrived in 1881, and a railroad surveyor gave the town its name, after a garden in France. By the late 1880s two rural mail routes, each thirty miles long, took a full day to ride. Argyle built a two-story brick school in 1885 and opened a state bank in 1888.

What the plaque says

Argyle This area was first settled in the 1850s by members of the Peters Colony. In 1881 the town of Argyle was started by Galveston developer James Morrill, when a rail line was built through the area. Early residents came from neighboring settlements. Schools consolidated with Argyle included Beulah, Pilot Knob, Stoney Ridge, Lane, and parts of the Prairie Mound and Litsey districts. An 1895 fire destroyed the business area, but it was soon rebuilt. The growth of nearby urban areas, which led to a decline before World War II, has resulted in recent population increases. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 7.1 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Wise County Courthouse — 25 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 25 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 32 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• Bartonville — 4.3 mi
• Chinn's Chapel Methodist Church — 6.3 mi
• 1848 Denton County Seat — 6.3 mi
• First University Building — 6.8 mi