Think there’s no history in Southlake? Think again! Our town has a rich history that reaches past Southlake’s birth in 1956 to the 1840s, when Texas was a republic, and before.
Use this map and the descriptions below to take the family (especially “Little House”-loving kids itching for an adventure) on a magical history tour. An asterisk means there’s a historical marker.
Learn more about Southlake’s past and, no matter how long you’ve lived here, you’ll feel a deeper connection to this wonderful city we call home. Enjoy!
(1) Farm to Market Road 1709 – Steer your horsepower onto what was once the old wagon road between Keller and Grapevine. (Of course, it’s been leveled and straightened over the years; in the 1870s, the road had 26 90-degree turns.) To find lots of interesting information about old roads in now-Southlake, swing by the Southlake Public Library and look at “An Historical Perspective of Southlake and Vicinity” by E.I. “Jack” Wiesman of Southlake, in the local history section next to the magazines.
(2) Bunker Hill – From the mid-1800s on, determined and courageous folks heading west by wagon – some to California’s gold fields, some to find a new home – made camp in a place where spring water was abundant and firewood was plentiful. Bunker Hill, where the water tower is in Bicentennial Park, was the highest hill around and served as a lookout point (the hill was lowered a few feet when the park was built in 1976). At times, as many as 100 covered wagons camped at the flat area adjacent to the hill, called Blossom Prairie (around where Tom Thumb is now, and further south). To reach the campground from the east, a day that started at the California Crossing of the Trinity River, pioneers spent a long, hard day of picking their way through miles of the thickly forested Eastern Cross Timbers. [Off White's Chapel Boulevard, close to FM 1709]
(3) Replica log house built with logs cut and hewn before Lincoln was president – A single-pen (one-room) house built of post-oak logs with a stone fireplace was constructed in 2008 by noted log cabin restorer Bill Marquis using antique tools and centuries-old methods. The support columns for the back porch are 1853 bois d’arc telegraph poles that once stood along the Butterfield Stage route in Wise County. The red clay between the logs is local and historically correct. See the log house blog (a few buttons down) for a Q&A and more. [Off White's Chapel, close to FM 1709, near the water tower]
(4) * White’s Chapel Cemetery – The first recorded burial, in 1872, was of an infant whose westward-heading parents were camping at the campground that's now part of Bicentennial Park. Many area pioneers and their families rest here, including Elihu Newton, who served two terms in the Texas legislature. Some graves are marked with small fieldstones. (If you go into this or any other cemetery, remind children not to climb on tombstones. The broken stones you’ll see weren’t damaged by “the elements” but by humans.) Burials are still taking place here, but all plots have been spoken for. [Corner of FM 1709 and White's Chapel]
(5) * White’s Chapel United Methodist Church – See all the steeples at the church founded by settlers from Dade County, Georgia, who made the three-month trip here in 1871 in wagons, ox carts and buggies. The first church was made of logs. The smallest of the three churches you see today (the one that’s been moved around back) was built in the 1920s.
(6) * Jellico community – This once-lively community consisted of a general store and post office, cotton gin, grist mill and sorghum syrup press and was established in the late 1880s. Due to economic hardships, it was gone by 1912. [Corner of FM 1709 and Davis Boulevard, near where Wild Oats Market is now; a historical marker is next to 1709.]
(7) Lone Elm School – Across from Jellico in a grove of trees next to the fire station was Lone Elm School, where 20 to 40 students learned the 3 R’s during the yearly five-month school term (the other months, kids helped on the farm). After the school closed, students attended other area schools. [Site is near Southlake's west fire facility, near FM 1709 and Davis Boulevard.]
(8) Baptizing hole – One of several in the area was located in back of Sonic, about where the Dumpster is, on what was called the Jellico branch. [Sonic is a little south of the intersection of FM 1709 and Davis Boulevard]
(9) * Thomas Hood Cemetery – This graveyard had the good fortune of ending up just off of Peytonville Ave in the Coventry Manor subdivision, whose residents take care of it. Thomas Hood was only 35 when he died in an epidemic in 1859. His grave is unmarked. Legend has it that a horse thief who was “strung up” was the first person buried here, also in an unmarked grave.
(10) * Monument to Highway Patrolmen H.D. Murphy and Edward Bryan Wheeler – On Easter Sunday 1934, gangsters Bonnie and Clyde – or members of their gang -- killed the lawmen when they stopped to help what they thought were motorists having car trouble. Some area residents remember the day well. [SE corner of Dove Road and the Texas 114 frontage road]
(11) * Lonesome Dove Baptist Church – Founded in 1846 by the area’s first settlers, this church has been at the same site (but not in the original building) since 1847. The name may have originated when the pioneers heard the lonesome call of a dove and associated it with their own feelings of isolation. In the 1960s, the church changed its name for about a month to First Baptist Church, but fortunately for writer Larry McMurtry (who said he spotted the name on a church van), the name Lonesome Dove was restored. Visitors are welcome at the Sunday morning service. [2380 Lonesome Dove Road]
(12) * Lonesome Dove Cemetery – Many Southlake pioneers and their descendants are buried in this cemetery, including Ambrose Foster, a veteran of the War of 1812. Buy a plot, and you can be buried there yourself.
Remember Cynthia Ann Parker, the girl captured by Indians and later returned to her white family? Malinda Dwight Hill, who is buried at Lonesome Dove, was at Parker’s Fort on the fateful day that Cynthia Ann was taken. Malinda’s father and brother were among those killed when they stayed behind to give family and friends a chance to flee; it took 15-year-old Malinda, her husband, their infant and others three harrowing days to reach safety. Many of Malinda’s descendants still live in the Southlake area.
(13) * Dove community – By the turn of the 20th century, “the Dove” included a school, a blacksmith, a store and post office, a cotton gin, a Woodmen of the World (a fraternal organization) Hall and, the center of the community’s activities, the church. By the 1930s, overfarming and other factors had caused the community’s decline. [Corner of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads]
(14) First Carroll School – Built in 1919 after schools at White’s Chapel, Dove and Sams were merged to form the Carroll Common School District No. 99, the three-room brick school quickly became the heart of the rural area west of Grapevine now known as Southlake. Grades were one through nine, then one through eight when students were bused to Grapevine for high school. In 1945 and 1951, three rooms were added. In the early ‘60s, a high school was built next door (now part of CIS), and in 1965, 24 seniors were the first to graduate. The oldest public building in Southlake, the 1919 Carroll School was where residents gathered in 1956 to vote on whether to become the Town of Southlake. [Near the corner of Carroll and Texas 114]
(15) First football field – Dragon football got its start in the early ’60s on a field just southeast of the 1919 school. To prepare the 80-yard field – that was all there was room for – Supt. Jack D. Johnson and another man laboriously planted sprigs of grass, then took turns visiting the field at night to keep sprinklers moved around. Later, a contractor working on the school extended the field to 120 yards, including end zones. [Behind the 1919 school] Experience Dragon football fever from its beginning with a DVD you can check out from the library. Watch the people who founded the program tell how they did it, plus see old film clips.
(16) * Thomas Easter Cemetery – Did you know that the hill in front of T.J. Maxx is a pioneer cemetery established in 1862? A former owner of the property, thinking the cemetery would hurt his chances to sell the land, is said to have thrown the headstones into a creek. Some were recovered, but their exact placement is unknown. The Easter School once stood alongside the burial ground. [Off of FM 1709]
(17) Crooked Lane – Travel Crooked Lane between Nolen Drive and Kimball Avenue and you’re on part of the old stage line between McKinney and Birdville (it was unpaved, of course). Before that, it was an Indian trail.
(18) McPherson-Fechtel farm – You know this spot today as the “old” part of Town Square, but for many years it was a chicken farm. (For that matter, until about 1990, some of what’s now Timarron was a hog farm.) The park in back of the Hilton Hotel is named for the McPherson family, which arrived from Alabama in 1893 in covered wagons. [Near corner of FM 1709 and Carroll Avenue]
(19) Pioneer log house site – Until 1996, a one-room 1865-era log house stood near the front of what is now DSW Shoes. The house was disassembled by the Southlake Historical Society, and logs from this structure and two others were used to reconstruct a log house in Bicentennial Park. Until a few years ago, when the Central Market shopping center was built, you could see a trace of a road lined with trees that had led to the house. [corner of FM 1709 and Carroll Avenue]
(20) Old Union community – Around the turn of the last century, this community, located near what’s now Brumlow Road and Continental Avenue, consisted of a school, a lodge, a store and several churches. Later, Union Church Road (for Old Union Primitive Baptist Church) was renamed Continental as a nod to the Continental Oil Co. Lope-up-n-Hitch, the site of community picnics and other social events, was nearby.
(21) Grapevine Auction Barn and Café – Run by brothers Jinks and Emory Jones, sons of Bob and Almeada Jones, the livestock auction barn opened in 1948 after much of the Jones’ land, and that of their neighbors’, was taken by the Army Corps of Engineers for Lake Grapevine.
The café, run by the men’s wives, Eula and Lenora, who were sisters, is considered to be the first integrated café in Texas. White cowboys and black truckers sat side-by-side at the café’s eight stools and two tables.
The family ran the business until 1974, when it was leased out. The site of the auction barn and café, along Texas 114 just north of what until recently was the flea market, was swallowed up by the highway’s expansion.
(22) Mount Carmel Baptist Church and Walnut Grove School, built for members of the African American community – Bob Jones, born in 1850 the son of a white man and a woman who was a slave, gave the land for the one-room frame church that opened in 1902. Members met there into the 1960s.
Dr. Bobby Jones, Bob Jones’ grandson and the former epidemiologist for Tarrant County, remembers attending the one-room, eight-grade school that his grandfather built and later appreciating the “extra” education he received: from first grade on, he heard older students reciting their lessons. Walnut Grove, which is no longer standing, closed in 1950 because most of its students were moving on to the all-black I.M. Terrell High in Fort Worth. [No longer exists; site is north on White's Chapel near Bob Jones Road]
(23) Bob Jones Nature Center – Encompassing part of the original Bob Jones property, the just-opened nature center is home to many species of plant and animal life indigenous to the Cross Timbers region. Visit www.bjnc.org to find out more. [Not to be confused with Bob Jones Park, home to many sports fields]
(24) Grapevine’s Main Street and Nash Farm – For shopping, movie-going and catching the train, people in now-Southlake went to Grapevine. On Main Street, visit the Cotton Belt Depot and Museum and the1940s restored Palace Theatre. On Ball Street you’ll find the Nash Farm, which reflects Southlake’s agrarian heritage, too. Ask at the depot for a free walking-tour map. Also on Main Street, don’t miss the Torian Cabin, which stood near the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads in Southlake until the mid-1970s, when it was donated to the Grapevine Historical Society. -- By Anita Robeson
An asterisk means there is a Texas Historical Commission marker at the site, except where the troopers were shot by the Bonnie and Clyde gang. That marker was placed by a state law enforcement organization.
This article and map originally appeared in the October 2007 issue of Society Life magazine.
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 @ White Chapel, looking east, 1960.jpg)
