Old Town of Cannon

Cannon's schooling outlasted its post office. A Van Alstyne Historical Society account says a school began there in 1866 and became Centennial Academy in 1877, with a thirty-room dormitory; the Handbook of Texas credits the Cobb brothers with founding Centennial Institute in 1876. The building burned in 1888, and a replacement held classes until consolidation in the 1940s. Reese Cannon helped organize a Masonic lodge that met upstairs in the school and later joined the Mantua lodge in Van Alstyne.

What the plaque says

Old Town of Cannon Founded 1852 by Elijah Cannon, who came from South Carolina with his children and slaves, to develop 700 acres of land. Family established a church, cotton gin, grist mill, wagon factory. By 1885 town had an academy and 400 people. Bypassed by Houston & Texas Central Railroad, it declined rapidly in the 1890s. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 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.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 21 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.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 22 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.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• James P. Dumas — 0.6 mi
• Cannon Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• Pilot Grove — 3.4 mi
• Pilot Grove Baptist Church — 3.4 mi