McKinney, Texas map

McKinney is 32 miles north of downtown Dallas on US-75, at the point where the solid suburban grid gives out and Collin County turns to farmland. Allen and Plano are south down the freeway, Frisco is 15 miles west, Princeton and Farmersville are east on US-380, and Melissa and Anna continue north toward Sherman and the Red River. Lavon Lake, the reservoir on the East Fork of the Trinity, is about 12 miles southeast.

Both the city and the county are named for Collin McKinney, one of the five men who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence and the oldest of its signers. The county was created in 1846 and the town was laid out in 1848 as its seat. The courthouse that faces the square dates from the 1870s, was remodeled in 1927 into the classical building standing today, and now serves as the McKinney Performing Arts Center; county business moved to a newer complex.

Downtown McKinney is a compact grid of two- and three-story brick buildings around the old courthouse, with Louisiana, Kentucky and Virginia streets running off it and Chestnut Square, a collection of preserved 19th-century houses, a few blocks south. The Missouri–Kansas–Texas line ran along the east edge of downtown; its right-of-way is now a rail trail.

Everything newer follows the highways. West McKinney, between US-75 and the Dallas North Tollway extension, holds the master-planned developments — Stonebridge Ranch, the Mediterranean-styled Adriatica Village on its lake, and Craig Ranch at SH-121, built around sports medicine and training facilities. North of US-380 the Trinity Falls development is filling in along the East Fork. On the east side, McKinney National Airport is one of the busiest general-aviation fields in Texas and the reason a corporate and industrial district has grown along Airport Drive and SH-5.

The growth pattern is easy to read on the map. Development moved out from the square along the rail line first, then jumped west to US-75, and since 2000 has spread west and north into former blackland farm country in bands of subdivisions separated by the section-line farm-to-market roads. Because McKinney is the county seat, the courts, the county administration and the sheriff's office all remain here even as Plano and Frisco carry more of Collin County's population, which keeps a steady daytime population downtown that most suburban squares of this size do not have.