City of Wylie

Wylie's nickname has two origin stories. Locals long said stores and barbershops stayed open until midnight, because visitors arrived by rail on Saturday nights to shop or see a picture show. Former mayor Eric Hogue told the Dallas Morning News in 2021 that this is incorrect: the phrase comes from the life of Riley, a World War I soldier's dream of carefree living, and a 1940s radio show of that name. The Lions Club then put up a sign reading Live the Life of Riley in Wide-Awake Wylie, and the city adopted the slogan in 2017.

What the plaque says

City of Wylie 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. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 7.8 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.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 11 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.
• Fair Park — 21 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 — 21 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

• First Baptist Church of Wylie — steps away
• Wylie Methodist Church — 2.2 mi
• St. Paul — 2.7 mi
• William Sachse Cemetery — 3.9 mi