Brazos Trail Region
Clifton
WHERE HISTORY AND THE ARTS MEAN BUSINESS Few small towns can crow about a prehistoric past, a royal visitor, nationally recognized artists, and a bustling downtown where antiques shops, restaurants and galleries…
Texas Lakes Trail Cities and Towns
Find your adventure in the cities and towns of the Texas Lakes Trail Region.
Browse Cities
Brazos Trail Region
Cranfills Gap
The first Norwegian settlers arrived in 1854, the year the county was established. Clifton’s 1923 Bosque Memorial Museum preserves the community’s distinct heritage with artifacts from Norwegian pioneer Jacob Olson. The descendants…
Lakes Trail Region
Acton
Acton is a place to relax, retreat and relive the past. Whether it’s solitude, action or merriment you’re looking for, you’ll find it here. From butterfly tagging to star gazing, bird watching…
Lakes Trail Region
Addison
KABOOM TOWN! Located just thirteen miles north of downtown Dallas, this Texas Lakes Trail city offers the best of both worlds – big city amenities and the ambience of small town Texas…
Lakes Trail Region
Allen
EBENEZER’S PLACE The city of Allen was established in 1870 and named in honor of Texas attorney general Ebenezer Allen. Built primarily to accommodate the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, the city’s…
Lakes Trail Region
Archer City
A thorough restoration of the Archer County Courthouse through the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program returned the rusticated sandstone edifice to its 1926 oil boom-era appearance. But it was back in 185…
Lakes Trail Region
Arlington
Fertile Blackland drew farmers here in the 1840s. In the 1920s the newly laid Bankhead Highway brought business and early road trippers. It also brought Prohibition gamblers and bootleggers to the infamous…
Lakes Trail Region
Bonham
ALAMO HERO AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Named in honor of Alamo hero James Butler Bonham, the city of Bonham was once also home to Samuel T. Rayburn, the historic and powerful…
Lakes Trail Region
Bowie
At Chisholm Trail Memorial Park the life-sized silhouettes of longhorns and cowboys let you know there’s something cowboy about Bowie. Clouds of dust passed this way during the late 1800s as drovers…
Lakes Trail Region
Bridgeport
Each week in the 1850s four stagecoaches of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company rambled across the wooden toll-bridge over the West Fork of the Trinity River. The frontier village of Bridgeport sprang…
Lakes Trail Region
Canton
TRADE DAYS A stroll around downtown Canton feels like a walk through the past, courtesy of the restoration job Canton citizens have been orchestrating around town. Canton has made a concerted effort…
Lakes Trail Region
Carrollton
THE HEIGHTS Carrollton boasts twenty-five official historic sites around the city, providing an opportunity to both visitors and citizens to learn about the city’s heritage. A brochure and self-guided tour map is…
Lakes Trail Region
Cedar Hill
White limestone outcroppings of the Balcones Escarpment rise from blackland prairies in southern Dallas County. The Hill Country-like terrain attracted settlers in the late 1840s who established the frontier community of Cedar…
Lakes Trail Region
Celina
CELINA PIKE The Texas Main Street City of Celina, located 45 minutes north of Dallas, received the first Collin County highway designed for automobiles in 1915, a roadway known as the Celina…
Lakes Trail Region
Cleburne
BRANDED 1867 The city of Cleburne, established in 1867, developed out of a temporary frontier military installation called Camp Henderson. Soldiers and citizens traveling between two more permanent garrisons, Fort Belknap and…
Lakes Trail Region
Commerce
Commerce was originally known as "Cow Hill" because herds of cattle ranged along the ridge between the Middle and South Sulphur Rivers. Today it is a lively Northeast Texas community that is…
Lakes Trail Region
Corsicana
OIL FROM WATER Named after the island of Corsica, the birthplace of founder Jose Antonio Navarro’s father, Corsicana was established in 1848 and continues to serve as the county seat of Navarro…
Lakes Trail Region
Dallas
LIVE LARGE, THINK BIG All grand accomplishments start small, including Dallas, now the second largest city in the state. Although just a pioneer trading post along the banks of the Trinity…
Lakes Trail Region
Decatur
Railroads reached Decatur in the 1880s, and before you knew it, a railway worker coined the crap shooter’s cant, "Eighter from Decatur," for the dice throw of a lucky eight. A decade…
Lakes Trail Region
Denison
MAIN STREET MORNING AND WATER SKI AFTERNOON Denison, birthplace of Dwight D. Eisenhower, is also home to Denison Dam, a mammoth thirteen thousand, three hundred and fifty-foot long earth embankment that holds…
Lakes Trail Region
Denton
Original and Independent Denton is the perfect place to forget boy bands and popped collars, traffic jams and monkey suits. This Texas Lakes Trail city is home to two major universities: the…
Lakes Trail Region
Edgewood
ON THE EDGE Like many rural communities in Texas, the story of Edgewood can be read in its surrounding cemeteries. The first, known as Barren Ridge and located two miles southeast of…
Lakes Trail Region
Electra
ELECTRA Electra, located a dozen miles or so from the Texas/Oklahoma border near Wichita Falls, was named after the daughter of local rancher and cattle baron W. T. Waggoner, although the poetic…
Lakes Trail Region
Emory
The community was originally known as Springville, reportedly for the many local springs that attracted settlers. In 1870 the town became Emory, the seat of Rains County, but water remains the town’s…
Lakes Trail Region
Ennis
COTTON GINNING CHAMPION By the second decade of the 20th century, the community of Ennis had been serving as northern division headquarters for the Houston and Texas Central Railway for over forty…
Lakes Trail Region
Farmers Branch
Farmers Branch lies in the middle of a vibrant metropolitan area, and visitors arrive by ultra-modern light-rail trains. Yet Farmers Branch remains the birthplace of Dallas County. A fledgling English-American immigration company…
Lakes Trail Region
Farmersville
ONION CAPITAL Farmersville, a Texas Main Street City, enjoys a certain celebrity as early residence of songwriter and movie star Audie Murphy. Murphy was born in nearby Kingston but made his home…
Lakes Trail Region
Ferris
BRICKMAKERS The city of Ferris joined the brick-making industry shortly before the turn of the 19th century courtesy of the Ferris Brick Company and other manufacturers who utilized the local mineral clay…
Lakes Trail Region
Forney
Historic downtown Forney offers great shopping and the Spellman Museum.
Lakes Trail Region
Fort Worth
WHERE THE WEST BEGINS United States Army General William Jenkins Worth, hero of the Mexican War, had big plans for a small but strategic spot along the Clear Fork of the Trinity…
Lakes Trail Region
Frisco
Preston Road bustles with activity in Frisco, one of state’s fastest growing cities. But before the Civil War it was longhorn cattle and cowboys that passed along the Shawnee Trail, the first…
Lakes Trail Region
Gainesville
STAR OF NORTH TEXAS Gainesville originally consisted of three families living in log houses near Elm Creek, hardly predictive of the thriving community seen today. An offer to grant 640 acres to…
Lakes Trail Region
Garland
Situated along the historic Bankhead Highway, Garland offers world-class shopping, exciting recreational and arts activities, and thrilling events and attractions—all in one welcoming community. Garland is the second largest city in Dallas…
Lakes Trail Region
Glen Rose
No wonder Glen Rose is the “Dinosaur Capital of Texas.” The state’s best-preserved dinosaur tracks draw thousands of visitors to the Paluxy River and the 1,500-acre Dinosaur Valley State Park. Two model…
Lakes Trail Region
Granbury
Why watch a movie about an ideal Victorian town square when you can visit one in Granbury. The 1890 Second Empire-style Hood County Courthouse, restored inside and out, looms over the idyllic…
Lakes Trail Region
Grand Prairie
Founded in 1863 by Alexander MacRae Dechman, Grand Prairie began as a stagecoach stop between Dallas and Fort Worth. Read more below the map.
Lakes Trail Region
Grand Saline
SALTIEST TOWN IN TEXAS What makes Grand Saline the saltiest town in Texas? A plentitude of salt, of course. Just south of the community the top of one the largest salt deposits…
Lakes Trail Region
Grapevine
A FUTURE WITH A PAST Although called Cross Timbers, Leonardville, and Dunnville at various times during its early development, it seemed Grapevine was destined for the name it would finally adopt…
Lakes Trail Region
Greenville
Business in Greenville boomed in the 1880s as six railroads shipped local cotton to distant markets. In fact, Greenville boasted the world's largest inland cotton compress, which set a record in 191…
Lakes Trail Region
Henrietta
The frontier area that became Clay County was settled in 1857. When soldiers withdrew from the area during the Civil War, Indian attacks began again and forced out settlers. Settlers returned in…
Lakes Trail Region
Hillsboro
Just over a century after Hill County’s grand 1890 courthouse opened, it burned to the ground. A 1993 fire gutted the modified Second Empire-style edifice designed by noted architect W.C. Dodson. With…
Lakes Trail Region
Honey Grove
Legend has it that Honey Grove owes its name to Davy Crockett, who in 1836 camped near the present day Honey Grove on his way to the Alamo and wrote about the…
Lakes Trail Region
Irving
This modern city that features all the best that comes with urban living has not lost touch with the past. You can take a stroll through the heritage district for shopping a…
Lakes Trail Region
Kaufman
Kaufman is the county seat for Kaufman County. Historic homes can be found in the neighborhood that surrounds the town square. The community is surrounded by a beautiful landscape of blackland praire…
Lakes Trail Region
Kerens
A growing and friendly Central Texas city conveniently situated between Corsicana and Athens on SH 31. The city lies about 70 miles southeast of downtown Dallas and some 180 miles from Houston…
Lakes Trail Region
Lewisville
Hugging the southern shores of scenic Lewisville Lakes and conveniently located along the corridors of two major highways, Lewisville is within easy reach of a wide variety of recreational activities. It is…
Lakes Trail Region
Mansfield
The area that became Mansfield was originally known as Walnut Creek. In 1857 two business partners, Ralph S. Man and Julian B. Field, relocated to the area to build the first steam-powered…
Lakes Trail Region
McKinney
Downtown’s historic district sports 100 shops, a dozen restaurants and a luxury hotel that housed the 1880s mercantile and opera house of brothers Stephen and John Heard. Stephen Heard’s restored Victorian mansion…