Onion Capital: The Historic Square

Farmersville earned a sweeter nickname than its plain founding name suggests. Sitting on the deep blackland soil northeast of McKinney, the town became a shipping center for onions so reliably that it billed itself the onion capital, sending carloads out on the rails alongside its cotton. The wealth that crop and commerce brought shows in the square and the streets around it: a bank that never failed, a stone Masonic lodge, founding Baptist and Methodist churches with elegant sanctuaries, and the grand homes of the Bain and Honaker families, who shaped local society for generations. This walk takes the fuller measure of the square — beyond the famous Audie Murphy connection — to read the architecture and the family stories layered into a small Texas downtown. End at the pioneer cemetery where many of these builders rest.