Frankford

Indian Springs gave Frankford its reason to exist, and the spring still runs. It rises on the west bank of Halls Branch and, the foundation says, watered travelers for hundreds of years, with settlers later camping in covered wagons on the wagon yard across the creek. The spring was capped at some point, then uncovered. The cemetery association restored the church in 1963 and invited an Episcopal congregation to worship there. The Frankford Preservation Foundation, formed in 2014, now manages the church, a remnant of native prairie and the spring.

What the plaque says

Frankford The site of the former town of Frankford consists of the three-acre wagon yard, five-acre Frankford church area and three-acre cemetery. The town of Frankford grew around Indian Springs after W.C. McKamy and his family moved to Texas in 1852. They sold firewood and water to settlers moving along Preston Road. Some of these settlers stayed at Frankford, creating the growing town near Indian Springs. The Frankford Post Office stood at the intersection of the Dallas North Tollway and Hilton Head Drive. At its height Frankford had a steam grist mill, corn mill, cotton gin, blacksmith shop, two general stores and three churches, with 83 residents. In 1858, the White Rock Masonic Lodge was organized at Walnut Grove, and in 1872 moved to a building in Collin County, located on what is now the northwest side of Frankford cemetery. The hall became the fraternal, religious and educational center for miles around. A church building was also erected on the cemetery grounds in 1880, only to be destroyed by a tornado. Some of the wood in the current Frankford church came from the original church. The end of Frankford came with the growth of the railroad. The line bypassed Frankford and instead went through Addison, eventually prompting the move of the Lodge Hall to Addison in 1907. The town of Frankford no longer existed, though the larger landowning families like the Cooks and McKamy's remained. In 1948, the Frankford cemetery association was incorporated to help maintain the cemetery. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 14 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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 14 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Fair Park — 15 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 — 15 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 Renner — 1.7 mi
• Liberty Baptist Church — 2.7 mi
• White Rock Chapel — 3.0 mi
• First Baptist Church, Hebron — 3.1 mi