Celina: Football Town & Old Square

Few small towns wear their identity as plainly as Celina, where Friday-night football is something close to civic religion. The Bobcats stacked up a tall pile of state championships across the late twentieth century, and the old varsity field where many of them were won is now preserved as a landmark in its own right. But the football town has deeper roots: settlers from Celina, Tennessee, founded the original community in 1870, a couple of miles from where downtown sits today. When the railroad pushed through around the turn of the century, homes and stores picked up and moved to meet the tracks, leaving the first townsite behind with only its cemetery. This driving loop ties the two Celinas together — the celebrated football grounds, the heritage museum and hotel on the modern square, and the pioneer burying grounds that mark where it all started.