Plano on the Interurban

For forty years, Plano kept time by the electric railway. Between 1908 and 1948 the Texas Electric Railway — the largest interurban system in the South — ran cars from Denison to Dallas to Waco on the hour, every day from six in the morning to midnight, and Plano was one stop on that line. The Interurban was clean, fast, and frequent in a way the old steam railroad never was: you could ride into Dallas for an afternoon and be home for supper, and farmers could ship produce and railway-express packages the same day. This short walk gathers what's left of that electric age in downtown Plano — the only substation still standing on the entire line, the post-office car that worked the route for thirty-seven years, the depot marker, and the brick downtown the trolley fed. It's a small footprint with a big story: the rise and fall of an entire way of getting around Texas, told on a couple of blocks.