The Heritage Association of Frisco’s mission is to research, preserve and share Frisco’s history. Since 1998, the organization has identified and marked 33 historic sites around town. While not all of the sites are still in existence today, many can still be visited!
1. Frisco ISD Maple Street Complex
This site consists of two buildings dating from 1922 and 1939. The two-story building currently being used as an administration building was built in 1922 of red brick and had six classrooms and a large study hall. It was heated by coal-burning stoves.
2. Dr. I.S. Rogers Home
Dr. Rogers was Frisco’s first doctor and first mayor when the town was incorporated in 1908.
3. Oldest Tree in Original Donation
This American Elm with a diameter of more than four-and-a-half feet volunteered on this lot about 1900. As the tree grew, it was too close to the house that was on the lot. In 1910, neighbors gathered to transplant the tree to the front of house.
4. Fletcher House
In addition to farming, the Fletcher family raised cows, pigs and chickens. Their eggs, milk and butter were the best around. Mr. Fletcher was the owner of the first baseball team in Frisco in 1920.
5. Dow Baccus House
On April 17, 1905, the Baccus family purchased three acres from the Blackland Townsite Company and built this home. The original mantles remain and many of the original windows still function. This home has many characteristics of Greek revival style. Mr. Baccus served as mayor of Frisco twice, in 1911 and again in 1916.
6. Biggerstaff House
The home was purchased by the Biggerstaff family in the 1930s. Known as “Mr. Fred,” Mr. Biggerstaff’s engaging demeanor drew people to his home and it became the gathering place for Frisco’s young people. He served as Frisco mayor from 1938 to 1944 and as the city postmaster.
7. Jim W. Gordon House
Jim Gordon was born in 1870 in Kentucky and came with his family to Lebanon in the mid-1890s. He opened Frisco’s first barbershop on Main Street in 1902.
8. Dr. J.M. Ogle Home
Dr. Ogle and his family moved to Frisco in 1902. In 1912, they built this home utilizing lumber salvaged from the old Howard School on the corner of North County Road and Maple Street. Dr. Ogle was a Frisco mayor, served on the school board and is the namesake of Ogle Elementary.
9. C.J. Hill Home
This Folk Victorian home is one of the first three homes built in Frisco on a lot purchased by C. J. Hill from the Blackland Townsite Company in February 1902. The lumber was hauled by wagon from East Texas.
10. Old Water Tower
In the early 1920s, more water was needed and a deep well was dug at the site of the water tower in downtown Frisco. In 1923, the city sold $40,000 in bonds to finance the purchase of the Frisco Water Works, and in 1924, the Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Company placed the tower. With a 50,000 gallon capacity, it served as Frisco’s only elevated storage tank until 1985.
11. Hamilton School
Until the end of segregation in 1965, Frisco’s African-American students attended the Hamilton School (site no longer exists) named after preacher Jack Hamilton. It is believed the building was erected about 1925.
12. Z.T. Acker Elementary School
Zachary Taylor Acker brought his family to Texas in 1880 traveling from Alabama in a covered wagon. In the absence of a local public school, Z.T. taught his children at home as he had been a schoolteacher in Alabama. Frisco ISD’s first designated elementary school was built in 1963 on an 11-acre plot of land donated by Mattie Acker Smith and served as the only school for lower grades until 1987. The donation of land and resulting elementary school named in honor of Z.T. Acker is a fitting tribute.
13. The Picture Show
While Frisco got its first movie house about 1915, the year 1919 saw a new and improved theatre on this site. This was the only movie theatre in Frisco until it closed in 1956.
14. McIntire-Montgomery Building
In 1911, Fred McIntire and his brother-in-law Carroll Montgomery were partners in the McIntire and Montgomery Undertaking and Hardware. The hardware business would have been at the front of the building and the rear would have been used for the undertaking portion of the business.
15. Carpenter Brothers Ford Dealership
This red brick structure was built about 1911 to house the Carpenter Brother’s Ford Dealership. After 1940, it housed the Holmen Textile Company and was the location of Frisco’s first public library.
16. Frisco Guaranty State Bank
In 1909, W.H. Butts organized the Frisco Guaranty State Bank at the corner of 4th and Main Street. In 1947, the First State Bank of Frisco was organized and used this building until 1975. The building served as Frisco’s City Hall from 1977 to 2006.
17. First Baptist Church
The Baptist Church is linked to the coming of the Frisco Railroad. A small group of people met on August 13, 1902, with 17 charter members and the congregation was named First Baptist Church of Frisco. The final worship service was conducted on December 22, 1974.
18. T.J. Campbell House
This home was built in Lebanon, Texas, in 1869, with lumber hauled by wagon from Jefferson, Texas, and was a landmark on the Shawnee Trail during the era of Texas cattle drives.
19. Grain Elevators
This complex of grain storage buildings was built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is believed that Continental Grain built the silos. Many early cotton gins, flour mills and grain storage facilities burned and were rebuilt since farming was the main way of life.
20. Calaboose
The calaboose was built and put into service in late 1912 or early 1913 and was used by the City of Frisco into the 1950s. Its purpose was to house a prisoner, and it could only hold one, until they could be transferred to the county jail or released.
21. Historic Downtown
The town was named Emerson in honor of Francis Emerson, but due to the similarity of Emberson in Lamar County, the name Frisco was supplied, taken from the Frisco Railroad.
22. Frisco Heritage Center and Museum
This ongoing collaborative project between the City of Frisco and the Heritage Association gives you a glimpse of what life was like for the earliest settlers of this area.
23. Youth Center Park
The Frisco Community Youth Center was the dream of community leaders to provide a place for the youth to swim, play tennis and baseball. Organizing began in the 1950s. The Youth Center served citizens of Frisco until 2009. Only the baseball field remains today.
24. Bicentennial Park and Homer Carter Tractor
As early as 1954, there was a park at this location, but in 1975, then Frisco Mayor Harold Bacchus acquired a grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife to make improvements. In 1976, as part of Frisco’s celebration of our country’s 200th anniversary, the park was named Bicentennial Park. It served as the City’s only park for years. The Homer Carter family donated the 1939 Farmall F20 tractor and farm implements that honor the agrarian past and farmers who settled in the Blackland Prairie.
25. Dunaway Cemetery
On July 24, 1853, Foster Dunaway married Eucebia Navel Granberry and they made their home in Lebanon. The cemetery includes 14 known graves of members of the Dunaway family. The Hillcrest Lebanon HOA preserved this cemetery and surrounded it with a beautiful green area and wrought iron fence.
26. Bethel Cemetery and Methodist Brush Arbor
Bethel Cemetery was established in 1850 on land donated by William Rogers, who arrived from Bethel, Tennessee, in 1847. The settlement was named Bethel after the Tennessee town and land was dedicated for family burials and a church. The church eventually became the First Methodist Church of Frisco in 1902.
27. Foncine
The community may have been named for Foncine Fisher, the daughter of R.C. Fisher, who gave Foncine its start in about 1890 when he built a general store, gristmill, cotton gin and grain elevator (site no longer exists). The family of William and Pauline Adams purchased 160 acres in the area in 1877 and built a four-room house on what is the highest point in Collin County.
28. Erudia
Erudia (site no longer exists) was a community in western Collin County on the Collin and Denton County lines. After the early 1900s, Erudia disappeared from maps.
29. Grove of Spanish Oaks
In the late 1800s, this beautiful grove of trees, known locally as “Spanish Oaks,” was a campsite and recreation area for Shawnee Trail cattle drovers, as well as families.
30. Zion Cemetery
As of 2009, there were approximately 259 burials here. Zion Cemetery hill is usually covered with Texas bluebonnets during springtime.
31. Little Elm Cemetery
The cemetery is the final resting place for people who were prominent in the history of Frisco and Little Elm. Many early doctors and Frisco’s first mayor, Dr. I.S. Rogers, are buried here.
32. Twin Wells
This became a favorite watering place for the cattle on the Shawnee/Preston Trail and provided a good place to bed down for the night while trail bosses and cowboys found a “watering hole” of their own at one of Lebanon’s saloons.
