The History of Celina, Texas

Celina was established in 1879 and named by John T. Mulkey for his hometown of Celina, Tennessee. A post office opened in 1881, and by 1884 the little community had 150 people, a school, a Methodist church, general stores, and a cotton gin and gristmill. It was a normal small farm town — its population even dipped to a low of fifty by 1892 — sitting on the northwestern Collin County prairie, waiting for the thing that would make or break every town of its era: the railroad.

The railroad came in 1902, when the St. Louis, San Francisco and Texas line reached the area — but it ran a mile north of the existing town. So Celina moved to it. Residents jacked up their buildings and rolled them on logs a full mile to the new tracks, a feat of collective stubbornness that earned the town its lasting nickname, Rollertown. Celina incorporated at its new location in 1907. Then in 1911 an enterprising local named J. Fred Smith built out a whole new town square — gravel streets, concrete sidewalks, a power plant, street lights, a well — and promoted 'Celina, the City Beautiful' so aggressively that some call his square one of the first shopping centers in Texas.

For most of the 20th century Celina stayed a small farming town, well north of the metro's reach. Then the Collin County growth wave, which had already remade McKinney and Frisco, pushed all the way up to Celina — and the town that once rolled its buildings to chase the railroad found itself repeatedly ranked among the fastest-growing cities in the entire country. Master-planned communities now spread across the old prairie, and Celina has become the northern frontier of the metro's relentless expansion.