The Interurban that wasn't, but the Report that was

An unpublished and undated engineer's report details a plan to connect McKinney (Collin County, Texas) to Paris (Lamar County, Texas) with an interurban railway.

The Cotton Belt Depot at Whitewright is depicted as an included photograph (not reproduced photo) in the report found at the Portal to Texas History. Link is below!

The Interurban, known throughout its life during the first quarter of the 20th century as both "the Texas Traction Company" and "Texas Electric Railway," became a well-orchestrated web of public transport that connected Fort Worth and Dallas to each other and to county seats surrounding them. The lines weren't made just for convenience, either; their presence developed tourist attractions (like Woodlake between Sherman and Denison and Lake Erie at Hadley) and even suburban developments.

Many cities attained an economic boom when the interurban trains came to their hubs. Paris, Lamar County, Texas desired the same effect that places like Terrell (Kaufman County) and Corsicana (Navarro County) enjoyed. Around 1915,* Fred Jones, a consulting engineer most likely hired by the interurban company, compiled a report of statistics and descriptions that would gauge the feasibility of running a commuter railway parallel to the Cotton Belt and Texas and Pacific lines in northeastern Collin County, southern Grayson County, central Fannin County, and into the western half of Lamar County.

What a great idea this would have been! The line would have followed the old stagecoach route from McKinney to Valdosta to Whitewright. From Whitwright, the road would connect to Trenton, Randolph, and Edhube into Bonham. Then, from Bonham to Honey Grove to Paris. The report even mentions that Pilot Grove (Grayson County), which is now just a spot on the map, was still maintaining its old-time importance as a road-shipping center... since the 1840s, it had been a meeting point for various stage coaches.

But I write "would have" because the idea never came to fruition. Darn it.

The only evidence left from this ideas is the typed report, bound in leather on onion skin, that is held by the University of North Texas libraries -- which the archivists have, thankfully, scanned and uploaded for all of us to enjoy. So although there never was an interurban, there is a new resource, with new-to-me photographs, to peruse. Hey, we take what we can get!

*I dated the report to around 1915 as it mentions the "Carlisle Military School" in Whitewright, Grayson County, Texas, which existed from 1914 to 1917, and includes a rendering of the Gibraltar Hotel in Paris, which opened in 1916.

A map of the Interurban as it existed at the time, with the proposed routes dotted (there's also a proposed route between Fort Worth and Denton!) is included in this ca. 1917 report about the proposed McKinney to Paris line (UNT).

The report includes this image of the Bonham cotton mill and the ice house between the T&P Railway tracks (and, I believe, the roundhouse and machine shops in the back). I've never seen this image! (UNT)

The Flour Mill in McKinney was under construction when this photo was taken. Check out the freight warehouse! And the railcars! (UNT).

The Carlisle Military Academy's building once housed Grayson College (not the current junior college). The military academy closed in 1917 (UNT).

An artistic depiction of the Gibraltar Hotel in Paris, Texas, which at the point of the report's publication was still under construction (UNT).