Boots, Rodeo & Bonnie-and-Clyde

Pilot Point took its name from a high stand of timber that guided travelers across the open prairie at the edge of the Cross Timbers — a literal pilot's point on the horizon. Settlers arrived in the late 1840s, a townsite was platted in 1854, and the village grew into a busy stop on early immigrant trails and stage routes. When the railroad pushed through, the courthouse-style square at its heart filled with churches, a newspaper that still publishes, and the brick storefronts that ring it today. That photogenic square has drawn Hollywood more than once — most famously as the backdrop for the bank robbery in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. This short walk loops the square and the blocks just off it, tracing the founding of the town, its oldest congregations, the newspaper that has carried its news for well over a century, and the pioneer cemetery on the rise above it.