Whistle-Stop Allen

Allen owes its existence to thirst — not the town's, but the locomotives'. In 1874 the Houston & Texas Central Railroad needed a place to water its steam engines every seven to ten miles along the line north of Dallas, so crews dammed Cottonwood Creek with cut stone and raised a water tower beside the tracks. Two years later the railroad platted a townsite and named it for Ebenezer Allen, a former Republic of Texas attorney general who helped promote the line. The depot that grew up around the water stop turned Allen into a shipping point for Collin County cotton — and, on February 22, 1878, into the scene of the first successful train robbery in Texas, when Sam Bass and his gang held up the H&TC here. This tour follows the rails: the stone dam that started it all, the depot Bass robbed, the electric Interurban that came next, and the downtown and homesteads the railroad left behind.