Prosper & the Lost Town of Rock Hill

Prosper is a town assembled from older ones. When the St. Louis, San Francisco & Texas Railway laid its line in 1902, it bypassed two existing settlements — Rock Hill and Richland — and the new townsite of Prosper, platted that year, quickly pulled them in. Entire congregations literally picked up their buildings and moved them north to the tracks: a Methodist chapel, a Presbyterian church, and a Masonic lodge all relocated within a few years, renaming themselves for their new home. The result is a downtown whose founding institutions are older than the town itself. This short walk visits the city marker and three of those transplanted congregations clustered near the heart of Prosper, then drives a little south to the site of Rock Hill, the white-rock community that gave up most of its people, its churches, and finally its very name to make Prosper.