Forney

Forney exists because two towns said no. The Handbook of Texas says the Texas and Pacific's promoters failed to interest either the county seat at Kaufman or Cedar Grove, so the line went through the settlement called Brooklyn, reportedly named for springs that ran together into a brook. Another Brooklyn already held a post office, and on December 29, 1873, residents renamed the place Forney for railroad director John Wien Forney. The town incorporated in 1884, and a mayor-alderman government followed soon after.

What the plaque says

Forney A Native American trail, sometimes referred to as the Kickapoo Trace, and early Anglo-American roads traversed this area prior to the settlement of the pioneer families of Isaac Briscoe and Jacob Sheltman in the mid-1840s. By 1871 a village called Brooklyn, which included a combined school, church, and lodge building, general store, saloon, and blacksmith shop, was established about one mile south of here. Brooklyn's business and housing activity shifted here after the Texas & Pacific Railroad extended its line through this area in 1873. A post office opened in 1873 and the town was renamed Forney for noted railroad official John W. Forney. By 1891 Forney had become a bustling town with more than 50 business establishments including a bank, opera house, and two hotels. Ranch and farm produce, including cotton, Bois d'Arc wood products, and the area's nationally recognized blackland prairie hay were shipped by rail at Forney and the town prospered. In the 1920s U.S. Highway 80 (The Dixie Highway) and an interurban railroad came through the town. Beginning with the Great Depression Forney's agricultural economy declined for several decades. Eventually Forney experienced a revival of growth as a bedroom community of Dallas, Texas. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 12 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 13 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 — 17 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 — 17 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

• Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) — steps away
• 1899 Automobile Trip — steps away
• William Madison McDonald — steps away
• The Forney Messenger — steps away