McKinney is located on a gently rolling prairie near the east fork of the Trinity River. It was established in 1848 as the second county seat of Collin County, which was carved from Fannin County two years earlier. Both the county and the new county seat were named after Collin McKinney, a pioneer resident in the area and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Early Anglo-American settlers were attracted by the county’s fertile soils and generous land grants from the Peters Colony. With the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in 1873, McKinney farmers and manufacturers were able to transport their goods as far south as Houston, ushering in a long period of economic growth that was interrupted only by the Great Depression. McKinney, located only thirty miles north of Dallas, is the northernmost suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.
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