Hiram Lodge No. 433, A. F. & A. M.

Collinsville was named for a teacher. The Handbook of Texas says the town began as Springville, on land from Joshua Miller, with another town, Toadsuck, nearby. After the Civil War L. M. Collins and her two sons arrived from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and started what many believe was the first free school in North Texas. The Texas and Pacific reached the town in 1881, and early in the 1890s residents voted to incorporate and rename it for Collins. By 1900 it had more than 600 people.

What the plaque says

Hiram Lodge No. 433, A. F. & A. M. Chartered on June 7, 1875, Hiram Lodge first met in a building on the original Collinsville Town Square. Since 1881, when that building burned, the organization has met in six locations and shared facilities with local businesses and a school. In 1881, when the Texas & Pacific Railroad came through the area, Hiram Lodge, along with most of the town, relocated to be near the railroad tracks. Civic activities have included aid to Masonic widows and orphans, support of war bonds, and assistance to schools and the Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 14 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 15 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.
• Eisenhower State Park — 25 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.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Tioga United Methodist Church — 6.3 mi
• Primitive Baptist Church of Tioga — 6.5 mi
• Diamond Horse Ranch — 6.7 mi
• Sanborn Ranch — 7.2 mi