Lavon

A June 1912 farm-by-farm tour for the McKinney papers shows Lavon as a working town. J. L. Rees held the post office, his commission dating from McKinley's first term, and J. M. Pharr was the blacksmith. Dr. C. W. Castner dispensed medicine, and T. T. Webb had just been named principal of the new high school. W. F. Boyd, farming five hundred acres of corn and cotton, showed the writer a small-grain crop of two hundred acres, including Golden Mesh wheat with heads seven to eight inches long.

What the plaque says

Lavon Located in southeastern Collin County, the rich soils of the Blackland Prairie and the water provided by Bear Creek attracted settlers to the Lavon area in the 1850s. Elbert C. Thompson came to the area in 1854 and others soon followed. Lavon began when the St. Louis and Southwestern Railroad came through the county in 1886. The first post office started in 1888 with Elbert Thompson serving as the first postmaster. Originally, the town was known as Thompson or Thompson Switch, after Mr. Thompson, who also owned a general store. To avoid confusion with another town named Thompson, the name was changed to Lavon in honor of Mr. Thompson's son, Bud O. Lavon Thompson. Early on there was a depot, meat market, general store, restaurant and barber shop. A bank building was built in 1907. James L. Rees, a Civil War veteran, and Miranda Rees' home was moved down the street to make room for the bank building. The Rees' home stands today as the oldest home in Lavon. Before a church was built, a two-story brick schoolhouse served as a place for people to worship. The Lavon Presbyterians organized in 1897 and erected a church in Lavon which served as a community church. Each denomination would alternate Sundays to provide a place of worship for the community until the late 1940s. From 1938 to 1940, a school building was built under the Works Progress Administration. In the 1950s, the creation of Lavon Dam attracted fishermen and boating enthusiasts to the area as a popular resort spot. Over the years, a number of businesses have been in Lavon, including a restaurant that filmed scenes for the 1967 movie, Bonnie and Clyde. The town incorporated in 1972. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 6.8 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.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 14 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 — 21 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.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Lavon School — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Lavon — steps away
• Abston Cemetery — 1.5 mi
• Millwood and Millwood Cemetery — 2.4 mi