The Denison Daily News
September 23, 1873

The town of Denison was incorporated on March 13, 1873 with L. S. Owings serving as the first mayor. Streets were laid out and the naming of them was to commemorate the names of Katy directors.

The Denison Town Company donated eight acres in the center of the town for a park which was one of the first public parks in the state of Texas.

Also in 1873, the first free grade school in the state of Texas was built at the site of, now, West Main Street and North Barrett Avenue and named the Washington School.

"A census of the city carefully taken within the last ten days reveals the following facts. There are in Denison, of actual residents, 3,951 people and there are within the city limits, completed and occupied, 451 wooden and 18 brick and stone buildings, not one of which was built a year ago.
There are in operation nine hotels, five dry goods stores, one shoe store, five liquor houses, five drug stores, two book and news stores, four jewelry stores, five bakeries, six meat markets, two auction houses, twenty saloons, three liveries, three lumber yards, six brick kilns, two confectioneries, six shoe shops, four tailor shops, two tobacconists, five restaurants, one gun store, two photograph galleries. Two churchs have been completed and the foundation has been laid for
the third. Three successful schools are in operation."

The Denison Guide: Complied and written by the Federal Writer's Project of the
Works Progress Administration in the State of Texas
Denison Chamber of Commerce, Cooperating Sponsor;
Published by the Denison Chamber of Commerce, Denison, Texas 1939, pg13