The History of Anna, Texas

Collin McKinney, the man both the county and its seat are named for, was among the first settlers in the area around 1846, and John F. Greer, who arrived in 1870, built the community's first home and store. But Anna proper began with the railroad. The Houston and Texas Central line was built between Dallas and Denison in 1873, and for years the site was just a stop with no houses. Then in 1883 about twenty people moved out to the railroad stop and platted a town, naming it Anna in honor of Miss Anna Quinlan, daughter of George A. Quinlan, a superintendent of the H&TC. It opened with two stores, a steam gristmill, and a Baptist church.

Anna grew slowly as a farm-shipping town on the rails, and it kept something most towns lost to fire or the wrecking ball: the Anna Depot survives today as the oldest extant railroad station in Texas — a tangible piece of the age when the whole town's fortunes rode on the tracks. Anna incorporated in 1913, with the pioneer merchant John F. Greer serving as its first mayor, a small, stable county town north of McKinney.

Like its neighbors up the highway, Anna spent most of the 20th century small and agricultural, then got swept up in the northward march of Collin County growth. Sitting right on US-75, it became one of the fast-growing towns at the county's northern edge, tripling and more as subdivisions filled the prairie. The old depot still stands as a reminder of the railroad stop that started it all — and of the superintendent's daughter whose name the town has carried for well over a century.