Frankston City Park

Before it was Frankston, the town was called Ayers, the name of its first post office, Texas Escapes says; the name changed after Miss Frankie Miller gave the land for the park. The first residents moved over from Kickapoo, about two miles southeast, when the Texas and New Orleans Railroad arrived, which Texas Escapes puts at about 1902. Early businesses included three hotels, several cafes, a Masonic hall and a theater. The depot just south of the square was restored in 1976 and is now the Frankston Depot Library. KLTV notes that the gazebo has stood about a century.

What the plaque says

Frankston City Park In 1900 the Texas & New Orleans Railroad built a line through this area and plotted a townsite here on land owned by Frankie Miller. The town was named for "Miss Frankie" who donated this site, known as the Town Square, for a city park. By 1908 a city park existed here, and a post office and many of the town's earliest businesses had opened around the park square. A gazebo, built about 1920, replaced a small bandstand and became the site of various local festivities and social events. The park square continues to serve as the town's social and business center. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 19 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 22 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 23 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 24 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Kickapoo Battlefield — 2.1 mi
• Freeman Farm — 4.1 mi
• Cuney — 5.4 mi
• First Gravesite of Cynthia Ann Parker — 5.4 mi