Things to Do in McKinney, Texas

The square is the reason people come to McKinney. More than a hundred shops, restaurants, wine bars, galleries, and boutiques fill the old brick storefronts around the former Collin County courthouse, and the whole thing is compact and walkable. You can spend an afternoon browsing antiques and local shops, break for lunch, and never move your car.

It's also where the city holds its biggest events, so on festival weekends the square closes to traffic and fills with crowds. Even on an ordinary Saturday it's busy — one of the few historic downtowns in the northern suburbs that stayed intact as the area grew up around it.

Just south of the square, Chestnut Square Historic Village preserves a cluster of McKinney's oldest buildings on about two and a half acres — six historic homes, a chapel, a general store, a replica one-room schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, and a smokehouse, furnished to show how Collin County families lived from the 1850s into the early 1900s.

It's a working piece of local history rather than a static museum. The grounds host the McKinney Farmers Market, farm-to-table dinners, and the Legends of McKinney Ghost Walk, so there's usually something scheduled. It's the place to get the history behind the downtown.

The Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary, southeast of downtown, is the big outdoor family draw — 289 acres of prairie, forest, and wetland with boardwalk trails, live native-animal exhibits, and a seasonal animatronic dinosaur trail that runs from about September into early March. It's a rare intact block of Blackland Prairie in a fast-growing county.

For more active days, Erwin Park on the northwest side has about ten miles of mountain-bike singletrack, and Towne Lake and Bonnie Wenk Park cover the easy stuff — paddleboats, playgrounds, a splash pad, and miles of paved trail. McKinney holds onto more green space than most of its neighbors.

McKinney's event calendar is one of its best features. Oktoberfest, held the last weekend of September, is the biggest event of the year — a three-day German festival on the square that pulls in well over sixty thousand people for the food, polka, and beer. In April, Arts in Bloom fills a dozen downtown blocks with work from more than 150 artists, plus a wine garden and live music.

In late November, Home for the Holidays opens the Christmas season with a tree lighting and weeks of activities on the square. Between those three and the smaller markets, dinners, and ghost walks scattered through the year, the square stays busy most of the calendar.

McKinney's spot at the north end of the Metroplex makes day trips simple. Frisco, just to the southwest, has The Star (the Dallas Cowboys' headquarters and practice facility) and the PGA of America's headquarters with the Omni PGA Frisco resort and its golf courses. Plano's Legacy West and Allen's shopping and outlet malls are both fifteen minutes away.

Downtown Dallas is around forty-five minutes south on US-75 for pro sports, museums, and everything a major city offers. Even so, most of what makes McKinney worth a visit — the square, the sanctuary, the festivals — is right in town.