PARKER, TEXAS (Collin County). Parker is on Farm Road 2514 near Maxwell Creek two miles northeast of Plano in south central Collin County. It developed around the gristmill and general store built by T. L. Johnson in the early 1880s. In the mid-1880s the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway surveyed the community and laid out town lots. Later the company decided to run its tracks through Wylie, two miles southeast of Parker. Although bypassed by the railroad Parker continued to serve as a retail point for area farmers. A post office operated there from 1888 to 1901, when the mail sent to Allen, two miles southwest. The population in Parker grew from an estimated twenty in 1960 to 1,098 in 1980, probably a result of the growth of nearby Plano. In 1990 Parker had a population of 1,235. The population grew to 1,379 in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roy Franklin Hall and Helen Gibbard Hall, Collin County: Pioneering in North Texas (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975).
