Many of the roads in Dallas are named for the towns that the roads used to connect to. Before Interstate Highways, if you wanted to go to Greenville, guess what road you used to do that? Why, Greenville Ave, of course. Ditto McKinney Ave, Denton Road, Ft Worth Ave.
The one that isn't immediately obvious is Preston Road. Preston was the name of a town that was a major fording point of the Red River in the Nineteenth Century. The town of Preston hasn't been there since 1938, when the Corp of Engineers damn creating Lake Texoma, inundated what was left of the town. Now, the only thing left of that ghost town, is the cemetary that is up on high ground, overlooking the where the town used to be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston,_Texas
The thing that was remarkable about the cattle trail that became Preston Road is that it was laid out so as to avoid having to cross any other creeks or rivers. You can imagine how important a consideration that might be if you were driving livestock north toward the railheads in Kansas. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/exo03 http://theshawneetrail.com/Documents/maps.pdf
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