Site of Lebanon

One Lebanon building survived the town. A county-history page says Lebanon Baptist Church was organized on September 28, 1879, with J. B. Kimbrough as first pastor, built in 1883 and dedicated in April 1884. Its large bell rang on Sunday mornings and could be heard from miles around. A 1938 article says a cyclone destroyed an old church in 1904. When Preston Road was widened in 2003, the congregation gave the building to the Heritage Association of Frisco, which moved it to the Frisco Heritage Museum complex.

What the plaque says

Site of Lebanon Settlers traveling to this area of Texas after it opened for settlement as part of the Peters Colony found free land, clear spring water and plenty of timber. Those who decided to stay named it Lebanon and began to establish homes and farms. On March 1, 1860, the U.S. Postal Service granted a post office to Lebanon, with Phillip Huffman serving as first postmaster. Although a general store begun by Z. T. Rainey in 1858 closed during the Civil War, other businesses soon were established. Located on the route of the historic Preston Road/Shawnee Trail, Lebanon was a popular stopping place for cattle drivers who used that road as their north-south route. Primarily a farming community, the town grew in the 1880s and 1890s to include a blacksmith shop, dry goods store, a saddlery, churches, doctors' offices, a hotel, tavern and other businesses. A two-story union school was built in 1885 to serve the schoolchildren in the community. In 1902, the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad bypassed Lebanon, which resulted in an exodus of residents and businesses to the new railroad town of Frisco. The school closed in 1947, and by 1959 there were fewer than a dozen homes remaining in Lebanon. As the 21st century dawned, only three buildings stood from the original townsite, but the history of Lebanon remains as a part of the urban and suburban development in this part of Collin County. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 12 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.
• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 20 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 22 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 22 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Baccus Cemetery — 2.0 mi
• Frisco Methodist Church — 2.5 mi
• Young Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Rowlett Creek Cemetery — 4.3 mi