Photograph of the Texas Historical Commission marker for Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad in Denison, Texas. Text: In 1865 the Union Pacific Railway Southern Branch was incorporated to build a railroad from the St. Louis-Kansas City area to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1870, with construction completed to the border of Indian Territory, the line was renamed the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad. This title was often shortened to M-K-T, which led to the familiar nickname by which the line is best known - "The Katy". Following the route of an old cattle trail, the Katy became the first railroad to cross Indian Territory, now the State of Oklahoma, and enter Texas from the North. On Christmas Day 1872, over 100 passengers rode the first Katy train into Denison, a new townsite named for M-K-T Vice President George Denison. The construction and acquisition of branch lines soon extended the Katy east to Greenville, west to Rotan and Wichita Falls, and south to Galveston and San Antonio. By 1904, the system had over 1,000 miles of track in Texas. The railroad transported cattle, cotton, and other crops to market. It also carried passengers on such trains as the "Texas Special" and the "Katy Flyer" …

Photograph of the Texas Historical Commission marker for North-South Railway Connection in Denison, Texas. Text: On December 24, 1872, a Missouri, Kansas, & Texas (Katy) railroad train carrying 100 passengers arrived here in the newly established railroad town of Denison. Its arrival marked the culmination of years of effort by the Katy to construct a rail line from the border of Kansas and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) south to the Red River and into Texas. The Katy earned this lucrative right-of-way by being first in a national competition to construct a rail line from St. Louis south to the Indian Territory. Several months later the unheralded connection of the nation's first north-to-south rail service west of the Mississippi River was established here when a Texas central railroad train pulled into Denison from the south on March 10, 1873. In a brief ceremony to commemorate the occasion Denison Mayor L. S. Owings addressed a small crowd by reading the contents of a telegram he had dispatched to Galveston, Houston, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco proclaiming his town's new role as a key link in the nation's network of rail lines. With this connection passengers and shippers could …

Photograph of the Texas Historical Commission marker for First Christian Church in Van Alstyne, Texas. Text: The predecessor of this church, the first Disciples of Christ congregation in Texas, was founded during the winter of 1841-1842 at McKinney's Landing in Bowie county near the Texas-Arkansas border. Collin McKinney, pioneer settler and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was the leader of the Bowie county congregation, which had worshipped informally since 1831. Between 1844 and 1846 the group moved to Liberty (later called "Mantua"), three miles southwest of here. In 1846, under McKinney and J.B. Wilmeth, the congregation was reorganized as the "Liberty Church" with eighteen members. In 1854, the First Mantua Christian Church was built. In this early structure a rail in the center aisle separated men from women. No offering plate was passed - donations were placed on the communion table. Members constructed their own "hymn books" which doubled as souvenir and recipe books. Founders of churches in many cities including Galveston, Sherman, and Glen Rose were members of the Mantua Church. In 1887 the Mantua Group organized the church on this site in the infant town of Van Alstyne, located on the Houston & Texas Central Railroad. …