Join us for an evening of haunted history, true ghost stories, and local legends as we explore the darker side of historic Downtown Denison, Texas! At each stop, you’ll hear about the real people, historic events, unexplained encounters, and ghostly activity that have become part of Denison’s haunted history.

Mark your calendars: National Fossil Day Celebration returns to the Ladonia Fossil Park on Saturday, October 17, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., hosted by the Ladonia Chamber of Commerce and the Dallas Paleontological Society. This come-and-go event lets visitors search the North Sulphur River for fossils and get help identifying their finds from the experts. UTRWD is proud to support the Fossil Park that makes this North Texas tradition possible.

The Coffee & Keynotes Club, meeting at Heard-Craig Center for the Arts, invites you to attend an event with coffee (and desserts!) with speaker: Main Street Director, Andrew Jones. Andrew will provide you with insight into upcoming McKinney activities to keep you engaged in the community during the holidays and beyond.

Join staff members from the Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site and the Sam Rayburn Museum for our annual Cemetery Walking Tour on October 31, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. This year, we will provide brief biographies of people buried at Gates Hill Cemetery, Bonham’s historic African American cemetery. Hear stories about people who lived and worked with Sam Rayburn as well as others who impacted Bonham’s history and community. This is a free program. In the event of bad weather, this program will be rescheduled for November 7.

One of Frontier Village & Museum’s most popular hands-on programs returns this fall, giving participants the chance to experience the traditional craft of blacksmithing in a historic setting. Beginner Blacksmithing, led by Steven Mildward of Black Dog’s Foundry, offers an introduction to the skills and techniques used by blacksmiths in the 1800s.

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis begins: U.S. President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on October 14 by a U-2 showing nuclear missiles (the crisis will last for 13 days starting from this point). The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis, was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in the United Kingdom, Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war. In 1959, the US government deployed Thor nuclear missiles in England, an initiative known as Project Emily. In 1961 the US put Jupiter nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey. All were within range of Moscow. The US had also trained a paramilitary force of Cuban expatriates, for a CIA-led attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow its government in April 1961. Starting in November of that year, the US government engaged in a violent campaign of terrorism and sabotage in Cuba, referred to as the Cuban Project, which continued throughout the first half of the 1960s. The Soviet administration was concerned about a Cuban drift towards China, with which the Soviets had an increasingly strained relationship. In response to these factors the Soviet and Cuban governments agreed, at a meeting between leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July 1962, to place nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter a future US invasion. Construction of launch facilities started shortly thereafter. A U-2 spy plane captured photographic evidence of medium- and long-range launch facilities in October. US president John F. Kennedy convened a meeting of the National Security Council and other key advisers, forming the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM). Kennedy was advised to carry out an air strike on Cuban soil in order to compromise Soviet missile supplies, followed by an invasion of the Cuban mainland. He chose a less aggressive course in order to avoid a declaration of war. On 22 October, Kennedy ordered a naval blockade to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba. He referred to the blockade as a "quarantine", not as a blockade, so the US could avoid the formal implications of a state of war. An agreement was eventually reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. The Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement not to invade Cuba again. The United States secretly agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey.