Frognot Community

The community left a school cellar and a water system. In October 1965, farmers and ranchers meeting at the Dixon General Store decided to replace the cisterns and wells they had relied on. The Frognot Water Supply Corporation was incorporated that December, needing 104 meters and selling 107, with 17 people buying 38 of them to guarantee it. Truman Webb managed it until 1987. Mary Hall of Garland climbed a scaffold to paint a green frog on a toadstool onto the first tank, repainted in 1974, and a teenager's 2000 sketch became the logo.

What the plaque says

Frognot Community Situated near creeks and branches in a valley east of Blue Ridge, the Frognot community (also known as Frog Not, Frog Nod, Frogknot) has a number of theories as to the origins of its name. Most of these theories involve frogs that appear in the nearby Indian Creek following a rain. Several theories are associated with the nearby Dixon consolidated school, which served as the foundation for the establishment of the community in the early 1900s. The school was founded in 1913 on land from Stephen Arnold Douglas Box. The school had a strict schoolmaster, Mr. Homer Parkins, who would not allow kids to bring frogs they captured in the creek to school. This policy evolved into several stories as to the origin of the community name. Another theory is that soon after the community was founded, the people attempted to eradicate the overabundant frog population. Within a short time, they virtually wiped out the frog populace, giving the community the name Frognot. Some believe that the community began as Frog Nod because the frogs were extremely loud while nodding off to sleep, and eventually became Frognot. Another theory is that the residents did not want a noisy railroad switch, which is also known as a railroad frog, and thus the community was named Frog Not. In the late 1930s, John and Ollie McGuffey opened the first general store. A second store was opened in the 1950s by Otis and Hazel Dixon. The Dixon Store served as the social center of the community and was the location of the foundation of the Frognot Water Supply Corporation. The concrete storm cellar from the Dixon School is all that remains of this rural community. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 18 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.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 20 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 20 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Blue Ridge Methodist Church — 2.5 mi
• George Washington Smith — 2.6 mi
• Blue Ridge — 2.7 mi
• Bethlehem Baptist Church — 3.7 mi