First Texas Interurban

The Texas Electric Railway was the system this line grew into. The Handbook of Texas says it was chartered on July 15, 1916 to merge the Texas Traction and Southern Traction companies, and ran three routes out of Dallas, including one to Sherman and Denison. At 226 miles it was the longest interurban between the Mississippi River and California. It carried mail and express but chiefly passengers, and freight was hampered because it could not run freight cars through Dallas. Elsewhere the Handbook dates the first Denison-Sherman line to 1896, earlier than the marker's 1901.

What the plaque says

First Texas Interurban Electric railways (trolleys) provided convenient travel between many Texas cities for more than forty years. The first Interurban Line was established in Grayson County, connecting the cities of Sherman and Denison. Founded in 1900 by Fred Fitch and John P. Crerar, the Denison and Sherman Railway began operations on May 1, 1901, with a single 10.5-mile track. The company built a power plant, offices, and a car barn near this site halfway between its passenger stations in the two cities. In order to provide water for the power plant, they built a dam below Tanyard Springs, creating a small lake. Named Wood Lake, it provided recreational facilities for passengers on the line's excursion trains. The Texas Traction Company, founded in 1906, began construction of a second Interurban Line from Dallas to McKinney in 1906. Merged with the Denison and Sherman Railway in 1908, the company expanded its operations, eventually connecting a number of north Texas cities and changing its name to the Texas Electric Railway in 1917. The advent of automobile travel signalled the decline of the Texas Interurbans by the 1930s. The last train passed this site on December 31, 1948, on its route from Denison to Dallas. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 4.4 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 8.0 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 21 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Woodlake — 1.0 mi
• Grayson Bible Baptist Church — 2.5 mi
• Sand Springs — 2.9 mi
• Park of Old Settlers Association of Grayson County — 3.0 mi