Fink
Pottsboro, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A community grew up near Fort Johnson on the Texas Military Road (also known as the Shawnee Trail) in the 1840s. Earlier called Georgetown and Reevesville, the settlement became known as Fink when a post office (500 feet north) was established in 1897 and named for Fiedrick Finke (1858-1920), a German immigrant who had come to Grayson County in 1884. The post office was discontinued in 1908. Never incorporated, Fink was eventually included within the boundaries of Pottsboro. In the 1960s local residents began annual Fink celebrations.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A settlement first grew up near Fort Johnson along the Texas Military Road—also known as the Shawnee Trail—in the 1840s, passing through the names Georgetown and Reevesville before it became Fink. The name honored German immigrant Fiedrick Finke, who reached Grayson County in 1884, when a post office opened in 1897. Never incorporated and eventually absorbed into Pottsboro, Fink kept its identity alive through annual community celebrations begun in the 1960s.
Why it matters
Fink traces the layering of frontier Texas history—an old military road and cattle trail, German immigration, and a vanished post office—into the kind of small crossroads community whose name endures long after the town itself.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Fiedrick Finke
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Preston Road/Shawnee Trail
Pottsboro, TX
Laid out in 1840 by Colonel W. G. Cooke and the Texas First Infantry, this military road ran from Austin north to Holland Coffee's trading post on the Red River, becoming known as Preston Road. Immigrants poured south along it—roughly 1,000 wagons crossed the river in one six-week span in 1845—and by the mid-1850s it carried Texas's first great cattle drives. Renamed the Shawnee Trail for a nearby Native American settlement, it funneled herds across Rock Bluff Crossing until the Civil War, with the last large drives passing in 1871.
Pottsboro
Pottsboro, TX
Before Anglo settlers arrived, the Caddo and Wichita peoples occupied this stretch of North Texas. The town took shape when Confederate veteran and land developer James A. Potts, who had come to Grayson County in 1868, deeded a railroad right-of-way to a Missouri-Kansas-Texas subsidiary in 1878 and platted the townsite that bears his name. Incorporated in 1885, Pottsboro survived repeated fires and later drew new life from the 1940s construction of Perrin Army Air Field and Lake Texoma.
Hagerman
Pottsboro, TX
In 1904 J. P. Smith laid out streets in a ten-acre wheat field and named the new town Hagerman for a railroad attorney. Within a few years it was a real place — 250 people, a cotton gin, school, church, depot, and shops, growing to three churches and a three-teacher school. Then the future arrived as a rising tide: word spread in the 1920s that the planned Lake Texoma would drown the town, residents drifted away, and the 1943 reservoir finished the job.
Lake Texoma
Denison, TX
Completed in 1944, Lake Texoma was formed when Denison Dam impounded the Red River, creating one of the largest reservoirs in the nation for flood control, power, and recreation. Its creation was championed by Congressman Sam Rayburn, the long-serving Speaker of the House, and it flooded historic sites including Preston, once the Red River crossing of the Butterfield Stage. Straddling Texas and Oklahoma, it drew millions of visitors and gave its name to a nearby state park honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower.